


what set you free? (i need you here by me)

by buries



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellamy Blake & Nathan Miller Friendship, Bellamy and Lincoln friendship, Bellamy and Monty friendship, Bellamy-centric, Depression, Drug Addiction, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Injury, Minor Bellamy Blake/Gina Martin, Minor Raven Reyes/Kyle Wick, Monty and Octavia friendship, Monty and Raven friendship, Octavia and Raven friendship, Past Raven Reyes/Kyle Wick, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Raven and Lincoln friendship, References to Depression, Season/Series 02, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:44:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 65,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>there’s not much to him but skin and bones.</i> or the one where we follow bellamy blake after clarke leaves camp jaha post-raging war upon mount weather. the camp struggles in finding its footing and readies itself for another potential war with an enemy they haven't crossed yet. ( post-season two au. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bellamy I

**Author's Note:**

> so, i've had this idea in my head for a while about writing my own au on what i'd love to see in season three when it comes to our favourite survivors. it isn't necessarily an alternate season three, as it's meant to fill in the blanks between the finale of season two and the premiere of season three, but i'll leave it up to you guys to decide if it's an au on season three or simply a fill-in-the-blanks that may end up being a complete canon divergence, as i doubt this puzzle piece will fit on the same board as canon.
> 
> i'm hoping to update this weekly, but it's competing against my other writing projects as well. primarily, i'm writing this for myself - a "what's next for bellamy blake?" it can be considered a sequel/continuation of [our house is crumbling under me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4375376) (but reading that isn't necessary for this to make sense), but with a massive diversion from canon. this is primarily a challenge for myself, as i'm writing this to be super self-indulgent as well as to test myself when it comes to certain aspects of writing.
> 
>  **please be aware this fic does contain elements and references to** : drug addiction, ptsd, depression, and physical and mental abuse. i will ensure to inform you of any of these elements being present in the chapters, whether as references or pivotal points.
> 
> the title is from billy idol's _rebel yell_. thanks for reading. this is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. thank you for reading. ♥

Bellamy used to wonder why Atlas was never tossed into Tartarus by Zeus. The other Titans had been, thrown in there without much of a care. But he had been given the Heavens to bear on his shoulders and Gaia as his only friend. 

The earth hasn’t swallowed him whole, despite his wishes that it would. It’d begun at the depot, had been his wish when he had been dragged behind Tristan and his smelly horse.

It’s his wish now.

He wants the ground to swallow her whole. He wants the roots of the trees nearby to extend themselves so far from their clustered shadows to wrap around her ankles and halt her. But Clarke continues to walk away, and he has to turn to give her his back.

It’s forgiveness he’s prepared to give her. He places it on her spine, makes her hold it in her hands even though it’s a hell of a lot lighter than what she’s given him. But what he can’t give her is relief. Respite. A swipe to clean her memory of what they’ve both done.

He doesn't know if she can feel it. But he can sense it where she's dropped it. Like her kiss against his cheek, he can feel his forgiveness placed by his feet, rolling back against the toes of his dirtied and large boots.

His hand feels heavy, warm from where hers had lingered on top of his own. He walks through Camp Jaha with his gaze on the broken Ark. He can hear the people around him, hugging one another, calling for each other, but no one calls for him.

No one calls for her.

Bellamy walks inside of the humid Ark, shoulders his way through the corridors to make his way to the medical bay. It’s a tight corridor of space. The beginning of the Ark labyrinth is crowded with people, difficult enough for him to push himself through the throng to get into another corridor that branches off from the main one.

Once he’s out of the cluster of people, the hot bodies and the palpable anguish and worry and relief, it’s an easy walk to the medical bay. Inside, it’s a mess, catastrophic with how there’s so many people inside, sitting on beds, against the wall, leaning their foreheads on the inside of the Ark like it’s something to depend on.

He stands in the doorway, looking around. His heart thuds so loudly in his chest he wonders why it doesn’t shake the inside of what used to be hell. But once he spots dark hair, a hunched back, and Abby Griffin, he moves. 

As soon as he takes a step, Jackson appears in front of him, but Bellamy shoulders him out of the way. It’s easy to do. There’s not much to him but skin and bones.

Jackson disappears inside of the heart of the medical unit. Groaning, the clinging of instruments, Abby Griffin’s instructions are loud enough to drown out his own thoughts, and he lets the noises around him take him under. There’s too many people inside of here, more than what this room had originally been built for. But he stays out of the way. Forgotten. Hidden away. If Bellamy’s good at anything, it’s concealing what he doesn’t want someone else to find.

But he knows he can’t stand over her like a large and intimidating shadow. He tries, though.

He stands before her, lifting his hand to her face. With the bruises marring her cheekbones, the dirt smeared over her forehead, her hair a tangled mess, she looks more tired than she does injured. But Bellamy keeps her in place with his stare.

“I’m fine, Bell,” Octavia sighs. He doesn’t drop his hand from her cheek when she flinches. Barely touching her and she feels it like she would a knife in the gut. “Just bruised.”

“You need to be checked,” he says.

Octavia grits her teeth and looks up at him. “Only if you are,” she says, looking at him stubbornly. Her gaze remains unwaveringly hard upon him. 

With a sigh, he sits down beside her on the stiff and hard makeshift cot, dropping his elbows onto his thighs as he looks down at the ground. Feet pass by him, shoes unidentifiable, but all he cares about is Octavia’s hand on the space between his shoulder blades.

“It’s okay,” she says quietly. He hears Jackson call for Abby. Feet move before him, smearing the silver floor with leaves and grass and mud. All he can see is streaks of it streaking the otherwise perfect glossy surface of the Ark’s spine. 

Octavia’s hand moves up and down his back. She feels for the notches of his spine, fingers digging through the fabric of the vest he still wears.

His rifle’s been dropped in one of the corridors. He thinks he’d pulled it off at the door, leaving it to lean against the side. Bellamy knows he should go and fetch it, but stones weigh him down, settling into his thighs to keep him seated.

“You’re going to be okay, big brother,” she says with a smile. Her voice is as warm as her hand, but Bellamy feels the vest around him constrict. The white material of the Mount Weather guard uniform begins to burn.

Looking down at his hands, he sees how his fingers on his right dig into the sleeve wrapped around his left arm. His fingers grip it so tight his knuckles are whiter and cleaner than his dirty shirt.

Tilting his head toward her, his brows raise. “You okay, O?”

She cracks a smile. Sounding amused, “Never been better.” Her hand slides down his back to sit against the small of it. Her touch is light and burning, but Bellamy feels a sense of calmness overtake him.

Letting out a breath, the exhaustion of the last several days hits him squarely in the gut.

And then he sees her.

Lying on a bed, arm thrown over the side, leg pulled up slightly at the knee, Raven tilts her head toward her chest to watch Jackson peel at her pants. She's far enough for him to not be able to hear her if she's to whisper, but she’s close enough her grimace seems to brighten the entire room for him.

“Cut it,” she says loudly. Grits her teeth. Wick stands beside her, arms crossed against his chest. Stiff and tall, Bellamy notices how he isn’t still. He moves from foot to foot with anxiety. “Just cut it.”

Abby appears beside Jackson, hovering over him like some angel. With a stick beneath her arm, she stays off the leg they’d drilled into. She doesn’t glow. It’s been dulled over the last few weeks. She stands with her arms crossed over her chest, her shoulders hunched and tired.

She doesn’t know.

The way she holds herself is too professional, too hopeful and relieved all at once. Her entire world still spins, remains tightly constructed together. She doesn’t know the reason for her to come to the ground has walked away.

And he let her.

Kane appears beside her, his voice loud enough to echo, “Abby. You need to get off your feet.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he says. Reaching for her, Bellamy watches how his hand grips her arm. Gently. It isn’t a command. He doesn’t come to her as her leader. What he says next is too quiet for Bellamy to hear.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Octavia shake her head. 

“What?”

Looking at him, she lifts a shoulder. “Nothing.” And he waits for it, waits for her words to follow that rip apart her belief that it’s _nothing_. Something exists in the space between them and it's Octavia who holds it in her hands. Her voice remains soft, but he can hear the stinging bite to it, “It’s just that none of this would’ve happened if Clarke had been quicker.”

Bellamy looks at her with a puzzled crease to his brow.

She looks at him, then sighs. Looking away, she explains, “Clarke had so many chances to stop this. And she didn’t.” Pressing her lips together, Bellamy thinks she’s trying to stop herself from saying something.

He knows he won’t like it. Somehow, it’ll sit in his chest like an acidic rock. 

Like radiation peeling away at hundreds of people inside of a mountain.

“She waited until they had her mother,” she says. He’d told her that. It hadn’t meant to be as sharp as it sounds from her mouth, accusing Clarke of being uncaring. But he can hear it in Octavia’s voice, can feel it form as something muddy and hard in his hands. When he’d told her on their walk back to Camp Jaha, he hadn’t heard how sharp and acidic his biting voice had been. But he can now, in the reflection of his sister.

Her hand drops from his back. Looking at him, Octavia lets her gaze drop to his hands, with his fingers still gripping his sleeve. “She said it was worth the risk,” she says, voice harder. She’s quieter now, but he can feel her anger slice the air, digging into him like a blunt knife. “It wasn’t worth the risk. You’re not worth the risk.”

“I know,” he says automatically. It sounds hollow to him. It rings hollow. It doesn’t scream and bury itself deep into his bones like a drill. “I know that, O.”

“Do you?” Her brows crease together as she stares at him. Bellamy lets his gaze move back to Raven, watching her as she throws her head back against the makeshift pillow of blankets and jackets. She grits her teeth. He thinks she’s counting the dots on the ceiling.

“Bell,” Octavia starts again. Reaching out, she pulls at his arm to get his attention. Looking at her, he finds he wants to slip away. Become water. Disappear like smoke. “You’re not worth the risk, okay? Losing you over what you did … It’s not worth it.”

“O …”

“Hey,” Monty approaches them with timid steps. Fingers wrapped around the wrist of his other hand, he stands before them awkwardly. The world around them begins to spin again. It makes noise, loud like the clattering of utensils and the voices of Jackson and Abby and those who work with them for today.

Octavia’s smile is small, but Bellamy’s heated by it regardless of its size.

“You okay?” Monty nods to Octavia. He looks cleaner, his hair still a thick mess on his head. Beneath his eyes are bruises from the lack of sleep inside the mountain.

“Yeah,” she says. “I am. Thanks.”

Monty looks at him, but doesn’t ask. Bellamy doesn’t reply.

After an awkward breath of silence, Monty’s timid voice, soft despite being loud enough to warm the room, brings him back from staring at Wick. “Has Jasper …”

“No,” Octavia shakes her head. “He disappeared.”

“You okay, Monty?” Bellamy asks. Looks him over, finds that Monty’s, thankfully, still in one piece.

But he knows he hadn’t been.

“I’m …” he takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. “Rain check. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“You know where Miller is?”

“With his dad. He’s actually a cool guy.” Monty smiles, a touch sheepish. “Miller told me he’d like to hear my moon theories.”

Octavia’s lips curve upward, wider in amusement. “Me too,” she says. Monty looks at her with surprise. Looking between the two of them, she shrugs her shoulders and laughs, “Selene’s always been my favourite.”

Monty’s brows pull together. “Selene?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she smiles.

“Cool,” he says. He looks over his shoulder, lets his eyes linger on Raven, before he glances between the two of them. And it’s with that look Bellamy knows he won’t like what he’s about to say. “Where’s Clarke?”

Octavia opens her mouth, but looks to Bellamy. 

The voice that answers is tired, and doesn't belong to him. “Blake.” 

It sets him on edge, that one word.

Monty turns to look at Kane. He’s standing there, like an overbearing shadow. His hands are behind his back, face worn, clothing torn and dirtied. He looks like he’s fought a war, but Bellamy isn’t so sure if he won at all. The way he holds himself, shoulders upright, posture stiff, he looks more like a leader and less like a man.

It helps, Bellamy presumes, to detach himself to the misery hovering over them right now. He wishes he had the privilege to be someone else within this moment.

“You did good today,” he says. It’s a repeat of what he’d said before. It’d taken him by surprise outside of the mountain where the fires had raged, where the stench of fighting and deception had laid itself thickly over the ground. “You … You did good.”

Octavia sits with a straight back. When he looks at her, he sees her smile is proud. She’s beaming. He’s never seen her like that before, proud of _him_ for something he’s done.

“What you did was brave,” Kane continues. His hands remain behind his back, indicating that it’s the leader in him talking. If his hands were in front of him, reaching out, desperate to tend to his open and bleeding wounds, he’d be a man. A person.

The person he had been with Abby.

Bellamy prefers him like this.

“It’s because of you it’s over,” he says. “And I want to not forget what you did. Going into Mount Weather was a great risk none of us thought to take. It’s why I want you to consider being on the Guard.”

“What?” Octavia’s voice is so loud it shakes the medical bay of the ark.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Raven lift her head. There’s something in her arm, like a thick string. A cord like that had been hooked into him. It’s in her arm, near her wrist, and leads to a pole that holds a bag.

It’s what she hadn’t had before. A pain relief. Something to tide away, to push back the sting of her bone splitting wide open. Anaesthetic. The one thing they never had before.

Stolen from the mountain.

Bellamy doesn’t hear Kane speak, but his words come to him slowly and in a jumble. He’s been thinking about offering him Guard since he heard it was his idea to go inside. He’d heard it from Clarke. Couldn’t doubt him with the intensity Octavia seemed to believe in him. And Raven’s refusal to give up on hearing the radio crackle.

“Think about it,” Kane says. His hands move. Bellamy looks at him again, away from Raven. “Please,” he says, a little softer. There’s a desperation to his eyes, to the wildness in there. “All’s forgiven for the incident with Thelonious. Your pardon will never be revoked.”

“I wasn’t afraid of that,” Bellamy says, voice sounding like a croak.

Kane nods. “Think about it,” he repeats. And with a tilt of his head, he looks toward Octavia. “You did good, Miss Blake.”

“It’s _Okteivia kom Skaikru_ ,” she says with a pride that sees him smile. She shifts from being childlike in her pride, beaming in a way that makes her look less of a girl smeared with war paint and more of the sister who had leapt onto his back until she’d been taken away. She softens, her voice lowering, “I can teach you sometime. The ways of a warrior.”

Kane cracks a small smile. “I’ll think on it.” And with a nod of formality, fitting oddly with the exhaustion of his hunched posture, he presses a hand against Monty’s shoulder before he walks away.

Bellamy watches him go.

“Weird,” Octavia says. Then, she elbows his arm. “You got Guard, big brother.”

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn’t smile. Monty looks at him with an odd expression, one that he can’t read. “History likes to repeat itself.”

Monty shrugs. “Maybe it’ll be different this time.”

He doubts it. With the familiar weight of a globe being lifted into his hands, a ball of heavy responsibility, Bellamy finds he’s back where he’d been at twenty-one.

Hiding a secret beneath the floorboard.

“How’s Clarke’s mom even standing?” Octavia nods toward her. Standing before Raven, she’s rolling her pant leg up. 

Monty glances over his shoulder before he shrugs. “They took a lot from the medical bay,” he says. Turning to face them again, he crosses his arms against his chest. “I think they left it empty. Took all their medications, from the liquid stuff to the pills. I think she could be on pain medication now.”

Octavia arches her brow skeptically.

Monty shrugs. “Don’t ask me, all I care about is seeing the moon again.” Tilting his head back, he gazes at the ceiling like he can see the sky. “I hope she's big and bright. I’ve missed her.”

His sister cracks a smile at that.

“She’s not going to take a break,” Bellamy says, voice gravelly. What he doesn’t say, despite it being on the tip of his tongue, is that she doesn’t have anyone to delegate these people to. Clarke’s gone. There’s no one else Abby would trust to make the calls she would.

Jackson leaves Raven’s bedside again, moving over toward the corner. He thinks Harper’s over there with Monroe. He flitters about like an untameable butterfly, thin and small in his own posture but his voice bigger than Bellamy’s ever heard it. He tends to everyone, ensures he’s seen those who sit on their beds. Bellamy’s never had an opinion of Jackson. It’s hard to make one when he’s always in the shadows.

Octavia sighs. “Do we have to be here? I feel fine.”

“Did you get checked?” Monty asks. “I got checked. I’m Mountain Weather free.” But he doesn’t smile as he says it. After a sigh, he looks awkwardly down at the ground, “I’m avoiding Jasper.”

“Aren’t we all?” Octavia deadpans. “Where is he?”

“In our room.” Monty fiddles with his hands. Unravelling his arms, he lets them hang, presses his fingers together to form a cage. “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t think he wants to talk to me. Which makes sense after everything that happened.”

Bellamy looks past Monty toward the entrance to the medical bay. He wants to move, but he isn’t so sure if that’s a smart idea. Jackson’s avoided their area, glancing over a few times, but he tends to everyone else. The bleeders, the ones who had been on that table, the people who _survived_.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Monty take a step closer. The movement surprises him. And his hushed voice encourages something hot and heavy to grow inside of his chest. “No one blames you, Bellamy. No one.”

He nods, humming for a long moment. Without any emotion in his voice, he says, “Tell that to the dead people who helped us.”

Monty looks as though he’s been slapped.

Bellamy chooses that time to get up. Standing, he looks down at himself, notices how dirty and bloodied and yellowed his white uniform is. It feels heavier than it had been when he’d stripped Lovejoy of it. “I need to get out of this.”

“Bell —”

“I’m fine, O,” he breathes out. Looking at her, he sees how her hands are curled along the edge of the bed. The war paint on her face seems darker, even thinner in its spread across her eyes. She doesn’t look like the little girl he grew up with anymore. “I need to get dressed.”

She nods her head, mouths _okay_. She doesn’t get up. 

“You should stay here,” he says. “Stay with Monty. Get checked out.”

Fingers curling deathlike around the edge of the bed she sits on, Octavia doesn’t push herself up. He still feels her shadow loom over him, though, as if she’s standing taller than him. “Bell, I don’t need —”

“O, one of us needs to be the sensible one. That’s always you.”

She cracks a smile. “Funny,” she says, “I always thought that was _you_.”


	2. Monty I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _if anyone saved his skin, it’s her._ or the one where monty understands the moon doesn't dictate friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i contemplated whether or not i'd leave this as being a story from bellamy's pov, but i've decided to go ahead and include different povs to try and help flesh out the story a little. i'm still indecisive if there's a place for the characters outside of camp jaha, but we'll see how we go! (right now, the povs will be bellamy, monty, octavia, and raven, as i've decided they're the major players and the characters i'd like to focus on). even though this is ultimately meant to be about bellamy, i love everyone else, and their stories are big parts of the bigger picture i'm trying to build.
> 
> i've updated the tags for this, as this chapter does mention and reference ptsd, and this story will be dealing with the aftermath of mount weather. hopefully things will pick up after the next chapter (which is planned to be raven)!
> 
> as always, unbeta'd, any mistakes are mine. thanks for reading! ♥

At their first camp, Monty had found the darkness to be scary. Looking out at it, the shadows in the trees, the way the moon failed to fall across them at times, he’d found himself scared.

Of course, he never admitted it. Posturing himself as brave, he only sat closer to the fire or a tent with light brimming inside of it because of its warmth. It wasn’t that the darkness and his inability to see what was on the ground, from berries to flowers to rocks, didn’t see him unsettled. He just liked the warmth.

Sitting outside Camp Jaha on the hard ground is different. He doesn’t feel fear; even when he stares out into the darkness beyond the thin, metallic, wiry gates they’ve constructed, he doesn’t feel anything close to fear grip the inside of his chest. There are monsters beyond those gates. He’s seen them. He’s spoken to them. He’d even let them feed him and groom him into a blood mule.

But he doesn’t feel afraid.

Maybe because he was there at their destruction, he’d somehow gotten rid of his fear. He knows if he hadn’t, if he had escaped the mountain instead of Clarke, he’d look in any direction and see any upward slope in the sky and feel a hand grip his heart and squeeze it with all of its might. He’d think it to be the moon trying to tell him something, even though he’s always been able to hear her even when she whispers using the quietest of winds.

Dressed in clothing that feels silky and itchy at once, he feels different. Not the same as he had before. His Mount Weather clothing is in a pile in his room, dumped in the very corner in the hope Jasper won’t see it. He doesn’t know why he wants to hide, even though he’s out in the open. He has a feeling this is akin to a corner in a small bunk. Jasper won’t find him doused in shadows. Jasper’s not even looking for him.

His hopes rise, anyway, when he hears footsteps. The crack of dirt breaking beneath shoes. The sound of the Ark groaning softly as it’s freed of some weight. He doesn’t look behind him, even though it’s tempting to. Monty has a feeling, if the moon is right, he’ll be looking over his shoulder a lot more upon the morning.

Waiting until the feet stop, he can feel a shadow cast over him. He can’t see it, not that he tries to. With his gaze on the stars, twinkling in the sky, innocent and oblivious to what’s transpired in the last twenty-four hours, he doesn’t see the shadow. He can feel it, though. It’s suffocating at first, then it becomes grounding.

“Did you know the moon never turns her back on us?” The moon’s half-full in the sky, smaller in size than he’s used to seeing her. But he hasn’t seen her in a long while. Only in pictures. Mr Cage’s paintings had always captured her beautifully. He thinks she’s smaller, not as thick and round in her halfness as she was before. But maybe their last camp had been closer to her than this one is. Maybe the moon really is a fair distance away from a certain point on Earth.

He doesn’t get a response. 

His eyes drop to the tops of the trees in the far distance, skirting over the thick canopy he’d walked beneath at a pace that was unsuited and different for them on the ground. When he’d been used to running, he had whispered along the ground, sliding as slow as a snail crawling along a smooth stone. 

Despite the lack of response, he knows someone’s there. Ignoring people has never been his forte. Monty doesn’t know _how_ to ignore the feeling of someone watching him. His scalp burns as hotly as the anger had sparked inside of him at the sight of Harper in a cage.

Once it settles, it feels different. Though he’s no longer paying attention to the moon, his hackles don’t rise in defense.

He’s safe.

The person behind him is safe.

His voice is quiet. “Maya told me that.”

“Maya sounds smart,” Octavia says. She moves to stand beside him, as though he’s invited her to. He doesn’t mind. Her shadow and her intimidating height from where he sits is welcome.

Looking to the ground, he sees the dirt and the grass, but he finds it difficult to picture Maya’s feet ever walking across it bare.

“She was.”

Octavia sits beside him. When he looks at her, she’s still a mess; Grounder make-up smeared on her face, hair slightly tangled in its braids. He thinks he can smell blood, but that may be what’s coating his hands. He keeps them balled in his lap, knees drawn to his chest, and refuses to look at them.

Feeling Octavia’s gaze on him, he looks up at the stars and tries to count them. Her gaze isn’t so hard, isn’t as heavy and piercing as her brother’s. It’s not pitiful, either. And when he looks at her, she smiles slightly, just a small upward curve of her lips.

It’s nice.

When she looks at him, he knows she doesn’t see through him. For the first time since he’s dropped on the ground, Octavia sees him as how Jasper had.

And now Jasper looks through him as she once had.

“Why aren’t you inside?” she says, turning her face to look out at the ground before them. She doesn’t tilt her head to look up at the stars. Studying the ground, she looks at it as though it’s an old friend. He supposes it is. He wonders how many times she’s been pushed toward it.

He looks up at the stars. “I’m talking to Luna.”

From the corner of his eye, he can see her head turn to look at him. Puzzled. “Who?”

Lifting his hand, he points toward the sky. “Luna. The moon.” Wrapping his arm around his leg, he smiles. “Or Selene, like you call her.”

“Is her name really Luna?”

With a shrug, “She’s Luna to me.”

“Oh,” she says. 

For a moment, they’re quiet, and Monty’s content to simply feel her sit next to him. She’s not close. Not close enough to touch him, not close enough that Jasper would’ve fainted at the mere brush of her clothing against his own. That Jasper’s grown up, he thinks, and Monty’s kind of grateful for it. Octavia’s more interesting as a friend than as some unattainable, pretty girl.

She looks up at the moon for a while. Monty forgets she’s beside him until he hears her voice. “Why do you say she hasn’t turned her back on us?”

“The moon rotates on its axis at the same time as Earth does,” he says. When he looks at her, her mouth is dropped open slightly, her brow cocked. “I read about it. They had books.”

Her mouth opens in an _oh_ , but she says nothing more as she turns to look up at the sky.

“Mom used to tell me the moon spun because of Selene,” she says. He looks at her as she watches the moon. He can see some bruising beneath her eye, scratches along her jaw. Underneath all the dirt and grime and the cuts and bruises, he can still see Octavia. “She used to ride this chariot across the heavens. Bellamy always told me it looked like the moon. I used to think she _was_ the moon.”

“Maybe she is,” Monty shrugs. “Maybe that’s why it spins with us.”

She arches a brow and looks at him. “You really believe that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re into science,” she says. She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “The moon controls the tides. Poseidon controls the tides.”

“And the moon controls Poseidon.”

“Who is Selene.”

Monty gestures up toward the moon, “Who is also Luna.”

Octavia shakes her head, letting out a soft, incredulous laugh. “You’re impossible.”

Monty shrugs. “I believe in everything,” he says. “And, besides, who’s to say Selene’s not up there controlling the tides because Poseidon’s asleep? Wouldn’t he need it?”

Octavia doesn’t answer immediately. Pausing, he can see her taking her time, actually mulling the possibility over. He wonders what she knows. He wonders what it is he hadn’t been able to read in the mountain or be told by his mother on the Ark. 

“I don’t know.” She sounds unsure, like she’s a little girl underneath the floorboards again.

Taking it in stride, he finds himself filled with the desire to see her smile again. “I think he’s asleep,” Monty says. “Everyone needs sleep. Even gods.”

With an arch to her brow, she looks at him, and asks, kindly, “So why aren’t you asleep?”

The answer is simple. “I’m not a god.”

Octavia rolls her eyes. “You should be asleep.”

“So should you.”

“I’m too wired.”

“So am I.”

Octavia gives him an unimpressed look before glancing away. 

He looks up at the moon again, and as though she’s pressed her fingers along his mouth, he feels his own smile. The muscles in his cheeks hurt from not being used. He hasn’t had much of a reason to smile lately.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

Monty turns to look at her, frowning in confusion.

“For looking out for us,” she says. “And for saving Bellamy.”

“I didn’t save Bellamy.”

“You did,” she says. He thinks to tell her Maya had done that, that maybe she should be thanking Clarke for mentioning Maya, but something in the way Octavia doesn’t glare at him stops him. She’s not so intimidating when she’s looking at the ground in uncertainty. “He told me what happened in the control room. You saved my life. I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing.”

“I owe you.”

“Octavia —” He sighs. She looks up at him like she’s confused. He doesn’t know if it’s the Grounder makeup changing the way her face shifts itself into expressions, but he has a feeling maybe she’s always felt indebted to those who save her skin.

The thing is, though, she’d told Jasper to aim for the throat. And so Monty had gone for the jugular.

If anyone saved his skin, it’s her.

Instead of fighting her, he lets her have this. Or he lets her _think_ she has this. That she won this battle. But she hasn’t won the war. There’s no way Monty’s going to let Octavia be victorious when it comes to this. What he did, she’d have done, except maybe with less precision with the keyboard. He can picture her stabbing it with a knife until something sparked and the entire mountain shut down.

“I don’t think Jasper’s going to talk to me ever again,” he says quietly. The ground doesn’t shift beneath his feet to prove him wrong. He always thought it would. Like how the dropship had shaken beneath them when they’d begun a new life, he expects it to vibrate violently right now.

It’s as quiet as Luna.

“Give him time,” Octavia says. He can feel her looking at him, but he refuses to meet her gaze. “He’s hurt.”

“I should’ve tried to save Maya.”

“And let her die out here?” Octavia shakes her head. Shifting along the ground, that’s when he can feel it move. By the sheer force of her own movements. “Maya was never meant to live out here. She didn’t want that.”

“She deserved a life.”

“She couldn’t breathe without a mask, Monty.” He thinks to tell her they would’ve found a way. There had to be more oxygen masks, more tanks — a way to introduce her slowly to the air that was full of radiation. Maybe she could’ve become used to it given time. But it all sounds weak and desperate, and he knows better. “She didn’t want this. I know I didn’t know her well or at all, but anyone who has been trapped in a mountain or under the floor knows what it is they want and don’t want. She couldn’t survive out here. But she couldn’t survive knowing what was happening behind that door.”

Monty looks at Octavia, taken aback that she’s still looking at him. As much as he wants to look up at the moon, he doesn’t. “I just feel bad. I miss her.”

“I know,” Octavia says quietly. He feels her hand on his shoulder. Soft and light, it doesn’t match the girl with the war paint over her eyes. “I don’t think she’d hate you for what you did, Monty.”

Pressing his lips together, he looks down. In what he hopes to be an inconspicuous manner, he lifts his hand to wipe at his eyes, one at a time. He can feel them burn with exhaustion and grief, with the images he can replay in his mind and see in front of his very eyes now. But he feels something wet trail down his cheek when he presses hard against his eye.

“Do you know where Clarke is?”

He thinks Octavia had asked it, but then he realises he’s the one looking at her expectantly.

She looks guilty. Or ashamed. Monty can’t pinpoint the look, but she isn’t as confident as he knows her to be. Her voice isn’t as loud as he’s used to it being, either. “No.”

He’d ask Luna, but he doubts she’d know, either. And if she did, he doesn’t think she’d tell. He hadn’t read it in the books Mount Weather had saved from the apocalypse, but from what he’s gleaned from her, he doubts the moon reveals everyone’s secrets, not even to those who talk to her most.

He doesn’t look at the moon when he asks, “Is Bellamy going to accept Kane’s offer?”

She inhales deeply through her nose. “I don’t know.”

“I hope he does,” Monty says. He nods, finding he truly wants it. Looking up to the moon, he thinks he sees her twinkle just a little, but it may have been a star, or just his imagination. His voice may be soft, but he can hear the conviction in his words, “I feel safer with Bellamy in charge.”

Octavia cracks a smile, amused. “Yeah?”

He looks at her, finding that she’s wearing a big grin on her face. It doesn’t look right with the black smudging the hollows of her eyes, but he thinks she looks better like that. Part Grounder, part Sky Girl. “Yeah,” Monty says, finding he’s smiling, too. “He’s not so bad.”

“No,” Octavia lets her hand drop from his shoulder. She smiles brighter than the moon. “He’s not.”

They sit like that for a while, with Octavia looking up at the moon and Monty sometimes looking at her. It’s when he’s counting the stars he feels her nudge him. And it’s then he smiles, shifting so he can nudge her back with his arm.

The moon doesn’t have a choice in turning around, stuck where she is from the way the galaxy has been built. But he’s beginning to suspect he’d been right all along. It’s a choice to turn your back on someone. Good friends refuse to, choosing to walk backwards and letting their friend dictate their footsteps like the moon does the tide.


	3. Raven I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _ravens were never meant to be caged._ or the one where raven decides to free a bird from his cage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: this was firstly written from bellamy's pov until i decided that i wanted to do multi-pov and try and give everyone a single storyline. the end, or main chunk, of that chapter is here. the beginning will hopefully appear in the future, since it had a very interesting exchange between bellamy and wick. i should say now that this story will probably feature wick, and in a light that may be seen as favourable, but hopefully the tone of this chapter shows you just how i'll be dealing with him and raven.
> 
> this chapter does allude to the events of [our house is crumbling under me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4375376). again, it's not necessary reading to understand this chapter!
> 
> as always, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thanks for reading! ♥

She hides for a good week. Or tries to. Monty kind of sticks around like a bad smell, one that _isn’t_ as bad as she likes to make it out to be.

Lying in her cot, she stays there for the seven days after Abby releases her from the medical bay. It’s under the orders she remain in bed, rest, gather her strength, and let her body repair itself that she’s allowed to embrace freedom yet again.

Raven embraced it long before a drill bit and tore at the flesh, muscle, and bone of her leg. This freedom doesn’t feel so _freeing_. If she’s to look down at her feet, she’ll see there’s a ball and chain around her ankle, tying her to her cot. It’s wrapped around her broken leg.

Funny. They thought she wouldn’t notice.

With her fingers crossed, she promises Abby she’ll remain in her cot. Tucked beneath the blankets, she tries to crawl under the sheets when Wick hovers. Staying in her workstation for longer than he needs to, he hovers, uselessly touching things, talking about the objects she stores, even asking if she wants her board wiped clean, her shit moved around. She keeps the board as it is. She looks at it from time to time and remembers what she had done.

She had gotten Bellamy out. 

Kind of.

With his long legs and his strong strides and stupidly stubborn determination to stay in harm’s way, Bellamy Blake was always destined to save himself. But she helped. And she’s none too shy to brag about it.

She just doesn’t with Wick.

Looking at that board gives her a sense of pride. An example of her achievement, of her contribution to a cause that couldn’t have been done with only Wick. It’s stupid to think of a transparent board with scribbles no one can understand to be like a trophy. But she thinks it’s stupid to erase it.

Sometimes, she can pretend nothing has changed. Things with Wick are normal. He makes fun of her for the atoms. Makes stupid science jokes. They return to normal, where they’d been on the Ark where he had been an endearing pain in the ass and she had both her legs.

Sometimes, she forgets. And that’s the reason why she doesn’t lock the door behind him when he leaves after she promises not to move a muscle.

Of course she moves. Ravens were never meant to be caged.

After the first few days, Wick’s presence doesn’t waver. But his shadow is joined with two more.

“What brings you here?” she says.

Octavia shrugs her shoulders. Still covered in her Grounder makeup, dressed in rags, smelling less like the compost Monty’s apparently created outside, Octavia moves lighter. Reminding Raven of the girl she had been when they’d touched the ground, she seems like she’s found her shoes.

With Bellamy back, Raven isn’t surprised Octavia’s returned to herself.

When she looks down, Raven’s not envious of her dirtied and mismatched boots.

“I was around,” Octavia says with a grin. Launching herself at Raven, still tucked in her bed, she throws her arms around her. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, quietly.

As if he heard her, Monty takes a step forward, hands clasped together in front of him, and behaves like he’s unsure of how to act around her. “Yeah, we were worried. We wanted to see you, but …”

Octavia pulls away and throws a look over her shoulder toward Wick. Standing at the side awkwardly, arms crossed against his chest, he’s a sore thumb between the three of them. It’s the first time Raven realises he doesn’t belong. 

“ _Someone_ kind of got in the way.”

“Like a big bear.” Monty lifts his hands, as though he’s about to lose fingers and gain claws. “Grr, you’re not allowed to see Raven. Grr, Raven needs her sleep.”

“I don’t sound like that.”

Monty looks at him, and easily says, “No. You sound far worse.”

Raven bursts into laughter, and it sees the three of them smile.

Once she quietens down, she shifts on the bed. With Wick’s shadow cast over her, she’s hesitant to even throw her legs over the edge. Her back’s grown restless, her hands useless and even dead. She can’t feel the bones of her fingers when she curls them into her palms. She needs to work. To tinker, to build, to fix, to bring someone home.

Pretending like she doesn’t need her fix, Raven stays in bed, but doesn’t lie back on the pillow.

“That _was_ a decent impression.”

“Come on!” Wick takes a step, literally, toward her. And he steps into old, familiar shoes. They’re a pair she doesn’t think he’s realised he no longer wears. She misses them. The ease between them, the dynamic they had before she’d fucked it up.

“I’m okay,” she says, looking at Octavia. Monty’s behind her, blurred, unfocused. He nods with a small smile, but she doesn’t focus on him. “Thanks for coming by. I don’t really get a lot of visitors around here.”

“You _do_ have a ‘Beware of the Dog’ sign on your front door,” Monty says. His body twists to point toward her door, but he doesn’t glance over his shoulder at it.

Her brow furrows in confusion. After a moment, Monty clarifies, “Okay, I put it there. When Wick said he was worried about you being bothered, I may have tried to design something.”

“It doesn’t look like a dog,” Octavia pipes up. “More like a fat log.”

“It was a good enough picture. It’s _realistic_.”

“For a log.”

“Thanks,” Raven says, She leans backward to see Monty past Octavia’s body. She still stands close to her cot, knees almost brushing against the edge. “I appreciate it, really. I’ll have to look at your dog-log and see how terrifying he is.”

Monty lifts his hand, finger pointed upward. “Log-dog, Raven.” He sounds purposefully exasperated, and it makes her smile. “ _Log_. Dog.”

When she can get up again, without Wick around, she will look at it sooner than any of them may think. But when she looks at Octavia, she sees the younger girl smile. She knows her secret, and Raven finds she gives her the same small, secretive smile back.

*

Octavia doesn’t stay as long as Wick does. Lingering like a bad odour, he hovers, still, even when he has things to do. Tasks to complete, people in power to impress — he lingers with her.

Raven knows why. Octavia’s starting to clue in each time she comes in.

Wick remains in the corner, fiddling with stuff. She can’t see what it is that’s caught his attention. Like a bird incapable of ignoring anything shiny, he’s always occupying himself with being nosy with her collection of random knickknacks. Raven yells over Octavia’s shoulder, “Don’t _touch_ that!”

Holding his hands up in mock surrender, Wick continues fiddling with what she specifically ordered him not to. But he doesn’t try to fix it. Leaving it for her, he at least seems to understand that it’s not his toy to play with.

Octavia sits on the edge of her cot, small, like the girl Raven remembers, but her presence is enough to make Wick disappear for now.

Still, they speak quietly. They never forget he’s there. (It’s impossible to with how he seems to walk into every little thing. It’s a _clean_ mess. It’s not something someone like him would be able to understand.)

Octavia picks at the soft blanket of Raven’s cot. It’s not the red one they’re used to. A dark green, almost grey, it’s thick and soft and warm, but it’s not the fiery one that she likes the most. It still lets the cold seep in, the nightmares grab hold of her when she’s alone. “Has anyone come to see you?”

Raven looks down, wishing they were speaking of knives, and Octavia has her answer.

“Wick’s always here …”

It’s an opening. Raven doesn’t know what that is, if it’s some sort of invitation to talk. Lifting her gaze, she sees Wick, completely oblivious to being the topic of a conversation he’s standing only so far from. If he focused, if he really listened, he could eavesdrop. But she has a feeling he’s just that clueless. She’s never given him the impression she wants to talk about him.

He wants to be talked about. She doesn’t want to be the one to do it.

“He’s like a cockroach,” she says, dropping her gaze. Removing any emotion from her voice, it doesn’t sound as monotonous and indifferent as she wants it to be. Even quietly, her voice has its texture to it. Giving her words unwanted layers, it sells her out to a girl who has spent her entire life picking apart the stories her brother had thought to carefully construct for her. “Just never dies.”

“Do you want him to die?” Octavia’s voice sounds interested. When she looks up, Raven sees her looking at her with interest. She wonders if she’s ever had this conversation before with Bellamy or her mother. Picturing her talking to Bellamy about a girl he might like back on the Ark makes her want to laugh. “I mean, metaphorically.” Octavia’s brows furrow together. “You’re not serious, right?”

“No,” Raven says. Sometimes, she’s reminded that Octavia had been hidden under the floor, behind a thick door, and the shadow of a brother she sometimes envies. She’s a warrior, a girl who has killed, been the reason for killing, and the very person someone they both respect would lie his life on the line for. But she’s still so naive and clueless. 

“He just …”

Octavia inches closer.

Raven presses her lips together, trying to figure out her words. “He’s waiting for me.”

Looking at her with confusion, Raven lets her gaze drop away from Octavia’s. It’s a heavy weight on her chest, searing into her at times like a drill. She hates it, feeling like this. Talking about feelings has only ever gotten her tied to a post with a few cuts on her body. It feels like it’s stinging, like Lexa’s taken her knife and started to slice at her again.

Octavia doesn’t have a knife. It’s her own hand that holds the handle now.

“We …” Raven pauses for a moment, and lets it linger for much longer. The words sit on the tip of her tongue. On the very tip, ready to take the plunge, but she presses her teeth together so tight it almost sends her head into a horrific pounding.

Raven refuses to think of it in any terms. Giving it thought means she’s thinking about it. Raven doesn’t want to feel the ghost of Wick’s weight sear itself into the mattress of her cot. It’s taken her too long to try and pummel it out.

“Oh …” Octavia looks over her shoulder at Wick. Raven thinks to tell her to not acknowledge him at all, but he remains oblivious, almost just another metal object she’s hoarded for herself to have. Sometimes she likes that he’s like an old ship door. Thick, unable to pull toward her. Unless she was a big enough magnet for him, he’s staying on the other side of the room.

An awkward silence sits between them. With Octavia picking at the blanket, Raven scratches at her arm. Her nails are growing longer than they’ve been before. Without having anything to cut them, seeing them break and become uneven, she’s growing claws instead. She doesn’t know what she’ll do with them, push people away or sink her talons into them to keep them close.

She can see how Octavia’s trying to think of something to say. A word of comfort, some advice, even a joke. Raven thinks to swoop in and save her from it. As supportive as she thinks her to be, Raven doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Alluding to it is enough to scare her back into her bird’s nest, so high up in her tree no one, not even the most skilled of climbers, can try and reach her.

“Has he accepted it?” 

After a moment, Raven realises she’s spoken. It’s a thought that’s been haunting her ever since she heard. Seeing Kane stand before them in the medical bay had been enough of an alarm that something was going on. Something big. But Raven had been high on pain medication at the time that she hadn’t felt the earth shift violently beneath her at the time.

She’s felt the aftereffects.

Octavia looks up at her, brows furrowed. After a moment of falling into a pool of confusion, she comes out of it. “Bellamy?”

Raven nods, and finds she holds her breath.

Octavia shakes her head. Raven had predicted the movement before she’d even found the question escaping the dungeon of her lips.

She doesn’t release her breath. Something heavy, like dread, sits its weight on her instead.

*

She thinks she can feel him coming. The ground shakes beneath his steps. The earth seems to sigh, or breathe quicker, she isn’t so sure which one it is, or if it’s her, growing anxious, or being filled with anticipation. Being cooped up in her workstation for a week with only a window open and her door sometimes left ajar has made her lose her mind.

She’s dropping herself back onto her cot, rubbing her hands against her thighs, when she can hear his voice echo through the corridor. On one leg, she can feel the pressure of her hand, the other is heavy and unfeeling.

“You shouldn’t be pushing yourself,” Wick says. Unable to leave her, he hovers, like he’s incapable of being on the opposite side of the Ark to her. Over the last seven days, it’s grown irritating. His positive reinforcement has burrowed its way beneath her skin more successfully than his eyes, than his feelings, than his desires.

Prepared to snap at him, she grits her teeth and begins, “I’m —”

“Raven.”

The voice doesn’t belong to Wick. It’s enough to make her look up. Something shifts inside of her chest. A thin blanket of anxiety lifts to only be covered with a heavy netting instead.

She wants to smile, but her mouth doesn’t comply.

Dressed in a pair of black jeans and a dark blue shirt, Bellamy comes to her workstation like nothing has changed. Standing at her bench, he doesn’t seem out of place. There’s a leather jacket on his shoulders, possibly there to ground him. The sight of it, dirtied and sitting well on his shoulders, like it had been made just for him, settles her.

“Bellamy,” Wick says, slowly pronouncing the syllables with uncertainty in his voice. He looks at Bellamy, who only glances at him quickly as though Wick’s a nonentity. Raven sees how he doesn’t seem to take him in. Bellamy tends to remember the shape of a person. Or that’s how he always made her feel whenever his eyes slid over her.

“Hey, shooter,” she says, belatedly. There’s warmth in her voice, but it seems uncertain to her ears. “Guess you don’t have such a lousy shot anymore.”

He shrugs, keeping his eyes on her. “I’ve had practice.”

It sounds like a coded conversation. Wick looks at them with a furrow to his brow, clearly lost. Arms crossed against his chest, Raven feels like it’s some defense.

“Hell yeah you have,” she says, voice sounding fractured. It’s as though she hasn’t used it — or she’s screamed for hours on end, even when it had only been a few horrifying minutes. She hasn’t had a decent conversation in a week. She hasn’t had a conversation with him that hasn’t been over a radio, his voice crackled, the warm deepness of it ruined by static. She finds herself desperate for it. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says. With a pointed look at Wick, “In private.” Cocking her head to the side, “Scram.”

Wick sighs, put upon, and nods. “Yes, boss,” he salutes her and spins on his foot, but doesn’t _scram_ just yet. Pulling the corner of his mouth down as though he’s about to share a secret with him, Wick throws his thumb over his shoulder and speaks loudly, “Better watch that one.”

Raven’s rolling her eyes, shaking her head as he leaves. Bellamy doesn’t watch him go, and he doesn’t smile like Wick does, either. She doesn’t know how to feel about it, but _terrible_ isn’t how she would describe it.

Once Wick’s gone, an unwelcome and unsettling silence begins to sweep into her workstation. She’s tempted to tell him to close the door on it before it fully enters, but she knows how strange that will be. And it’ll only make it worse, the weirdness.

“I don’t bite,” she says. Beckoning him closer with a wave of her hand, she drops it. “Look, Bellamy —”

“Are you okay?” His hand finds the corner of her bench and curls against it. If he could pick at it, he would, but the wood is hard to tear apart with his bare hands. Maybe if he was Heracles, he’d have a better chance at dismantling it with a simple press of his fingers.

She doesn’t know why she thinks it. After Octavia had rambled to her after Bellamy had left with Lincoln to Mount Weather, she’d picked up on a few things. Heracles was a man of great strength and bravery and cunning. Thinking about him, of the stories Octavia told in confusing patches, Raven had gone so far as to comfort herself in believing Bellamy was Heracles. It’s a coping mechanism she supposes she needs to thank Octavia for.

And ask her how to get rid of. Thinking of Bellamy in such a way is odd, especially when he’s standing right before her.

Except something feels different.

Opening her mouth, she can feel her heart stutter in the silence. She blinks up at him. It’s a question she’s heard before, many times over, from Wick, Monty, Octavia, Abby, even Jackson. But the way he says it sounds like he’s in pain. 

“Yeah,” she says. Her voice remains quiet. She blinks at him as though she doesn’t know who he is. 

Except she _does_.

“I am.”

“Good,” he says. He doesn’t appear relieved. Is it arrogant of her to wonder why the confirmation she’s okay doesn’t seem to appease him? Her hackles rise slightly before she reminds herself he’s not the enemy.

“Look, Bellamy —”

“Shouldn’t you still be in the med bay?” He looks at her legs, at how her bum one is still in its brace. Her other one remains bandaged up, resting on her bed. She follows his gaze with a quizzical brow, looking up at him once more. It’s then she realises he’s looking at her _right_ leg.

The good one.

It feels different. To have someone regard that leg like it’s a _leg_. Her left one is supposedly the good one here, even though she can’t feel it.

The thought confuses her. Her left leg has been baggage, a heavy ball and chain she’s been dragging all over the ground.

He looks at her legs in a manner that doesn't make her want to make up an excuse for them. He looks at her in a way that unnerves her.

It reminds her that she isn’t invincible.

“They needed the space,” she says, her voice sounding a little too sharp. Taking a quick moment, she tries to settle herself. Remembering Bellamy isn’t the enemy, even though he’s reached up to the heavens to pull her from where she flies to crash to the ground, he isn’t the bad guy here. “I’m _okay_. O-K-A-Y.” She looks at him pointedly, eyebrow arched, readying herself for him to challenge her. “And, besides, Abby’s given me all this pain relief shit that’s keeping it numbed. Wick’s keeping an eye on me. Octavia and Monty are doing the rounds. Pretty damn sure they need to keep an eye on fucking Harper a little more than they do me. The girl looks beaten and bruised like they threw her in with the lions.”

“They did,” he says. He doesn’t blink. He says it so gravely. She hates how he’s ruining her attempts at being nonchalant. The weirdness doesn’t lift. That silence warps itself into a menacing shadow that hovers over his shoulder. “They threw her to the lions. They almost killed her.”

“They didn’t,” Raven grits out. Moving against the bed, she curls her fingers until her knuckles are as white as his uniform had once been. She tries to shift, but gives up, leaving her legs where they are. Sometimes Raven knows how far to push herself, and today isn’t the day to strain her legs and fuck up the slow healing process she has little patience for. 

Bellamy lets his eyes sweep along the floor.

Her tone bites at him when she snarls, “Are you going to let me _finish_?” 

He doesn’t speak. That’s enough of a response for either of them.

It’s then she realises she hasn’t even _started_.

“I’m okay, Bellamy. You can stop worrying. You got everyone out. You did your damn job. You were good. So I hope this means that you’re actually going to consider taking Kane up on his offer.”

“How —”

“Monty and Octavia _talk_ , Bellamy,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe she should feel offended he thinks she’s so isolated, but she doesn't want to nitpick. Starting a fight with Bellamy sees her lose. The one person she’s _actually_ been desperate to see isn’t someone she wants to be successful in pushing away.

She wonders if he had even thought Octavia would talk. Monty sometimes rambles about inanimate objects that have no feelings, like the moon. But Octavia’s different.

Something shifts in his expression, but she doesn’t know what it is. It’s a challenge she sees and one she rises to try and complete.

Continuing with a kinder tone, she says, “They talk to me. Octavia’s been really worried about you. She’s been worried sick ever since you went inside of that stupid mountain. I honestly think it would be a good idea for you to take it.”

Looking at her in surprise, she sees it in the subtle shift of his brows. “Really?” He sounds skeptical. She waits for it. He won’t tell her she’s crazy. He’s not Wick. But he expects her to reject her proposal and walk away. When she realises he doesn’t, rooted to the ground in what she assumes to be uncertainty, she feels relief.

This role she’s playing now is different. It feels familiar; giving him a pep talk hasn’t been out of the realm of possibility. She’s enjoyed it, seeing him stand taller after a few choice words. But this feels different. 

He continues, “I think it’s another way for Kane to control me.”

“You’re the golden boy, Bellamy. Deal with it. You saved the day. Risked your own life. Proved to be successful. You’re not the guy who shot Chancellor Jaha anymore.” Raven shrugs her shoulders in an attempt to remain flippant. Listing his achievements in a detached tone is a hell of a lot easier to swallow than sounding _proud_. “Besides, you deserve it. A little piece of the power pie.”

Bellamy looks down and shakes his head. “I don’t want it.”

“Think about those kids out there, then,” she says. The springs of her cot shift, groaning beneath the weight she presses upon it. Balling her hands into fists, she pushes them down onto her blankets in the hope her conviction can bust her bed. “They need someone to look out for _them_. That’s always been _you_ , Bellamy.”

Looking at her unimpressed, he deadpans, “You’re really good at these pep talks, you know.”

“It’s the drugs,” she smiles. It’s a little secret of her own that the pills remain in their little container inside the cupboard on the far wall. She hasn’t been injecting herself with morphine. Hasn’t been taking her painkillers. She fell from space and crashed onto the ground. She’s felt a drill in her leg, a bullet in her spine, felt a scalpel in her back. Pain medication isn’t going to alleviate her of her problems. “They make me say things I would otherwise never say.”

He isn’t fooled. “But you do think it.”

She looks him dead on. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Bellamy doesn’t answer. 

It’s enough for her, pushing him into a corner. But she finds she doesn’t step back. Instead, she wants to block him in even more.

She looks at him pointedly when she asks, “Where’s Clarke?”

Bellamy looks away, off to the side, to stare at nothing at all. It’s a hard feat, given how cluttered her workstation is, but he doesn’t focus on anything against the wall or in front of him. She can see how his brows furrow, indicating that he’s thinking.

He’s thinking of an excuse for her.

 _Always protecting her,_ she wants to spit. And finds that the acid in her thoughts doesn't surprise her. Despite how far she and Clarke have come, Raven’s hand stings with the gratification of her fist slamming into Clarke’s cheek.

His silence is as loud as his voice. Not as deep and warm and comforting, but it’s enough to see her heart beat faster.

“Shit,” she mutters. Her gaze burrows beneath the skin of him, into the muscle, and deep into the marrow of his bones. Bellamy doesn’t flinch. She does so for him. 

Her voice remains low, “What the hell did she do?”

Bellamy inhales, but doesn’t speak. It’s enough of an answer.

“Gone,” he says quietly. Reluctantly, he looks up at her.

Her fingers grip the blankets of her cot. On the edge of her seat, she can feel her body prepare itself to shoot up and onto her feet in a show of rage. Of hot, fiery rage. 

“Gone,” she repeats. Her tone sounds too controlled to her own ears to be her own. But it’s better to remain in control. For him, at least. It’ll achieve nothing if she tries to push herself to her feet to stomp her good one into the metallic ground. “Gone where?”

He lifts his shoulders. “Somewhere,” he says.

Her brows furrow. The desire to claw at him, to dig deep into his skin for an answer, rises so violently to the surface of her nerves that she clenches her fists into the blankets of her bed. If she was strong enough, they’d tear. 

Her eyes never move from his face. “What did she say?”

His lips remain sealed, as though they’ve been sewn shut.

Raven’s voice grows sharp, hissing like a snake ready to snap its teeth into thick muscle. “Did she at least _say_ something to you?”

He looks at her for a long moment. “She bears it so they don’t have to.”

“She can’t face it,” she says. “What a —”

“Raven.” His voice is a warning, but she can hear the tired sigh in the syllables.

She doesn’t stand. Remaining on her bed, she narrows her eyes in confusion. “Why are you defending her?”

“What we did, it’s not something you can easily come back from,” he says, easily. Sounding like a member of the Council, it’s practiced. How many times has he told himself this over the week? How many times has he tried to rationalise Clarke leaving them behind in the dust of their actions? “She just needs time.”

That’s the kicker.

She looks like he’s slapped her. He has. Or maybe that’s Clarke’s hand, returning the hit. Pausing, Raven feels the shock and anger remove itself from her, peeling its layers from her skin as she looks at him with a sharp eye. Her tone is even in her observation, “You’re taking this way too well.”

“Things change.”

Defeat. What’s changed is Bellamy seems defeated. And the Bellamy Blake she knows has never let that serpent coil around him, let alone get so close to _touch_ him. A snake back, he’s always struck before another could think to hurt him.

Her mouth feels dry. Wetting it, she licks her lips. A stone moves into her throat, making her voice sound distant, even layered with something she doesn’t understand. “Are you going to leave with your tail between your legs, too?”

Looking at her, Bellamy’s gaze is unwavering. With conviction, he says, without missing a beat, “No.”

“Good,” she says. That thick netting shifts against her. Much lighter on her person, it’s no longer a disabling brace. It’s still there, the blanket of worry, as she wonders if she’s to blink and this Bellamy, the _true_ Bellamy who doesn’t give up, will disappear. “You’re the only damn person I trust around here to get shit done.” 

She doesn’t give him time to respond. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to hear it.

“So do it.” Sitting with her back straighter, she thinks that’s the equivalent to standing, looking him in the eye, almost being level with him. His gaze doesn’t move from hers. She’s got him, and that’s all that matters. Sinking into the marrow of his bones, her words are a drill she thinks to be much kinder than what the Mountain Men ever had in store for them. “Get shit done.”


	4. Octavia I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _she realises, now, that she’s ariadne’s string. she can’t guide anyone. he can’t rely on her to guide him._ or the one where octavia realises she has the power to change camp jaha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was a harder chapter to write, given the context and what octavia's currently facing. hopefully it works! 
> 
> i've realised that a lot of what i had planned for my story has sort of been featured in season three so far! (it's kind of cool to see what i had hoped to be in it is sort of featured) but i do plan to use it differently and keep to my outline. but hopefully this can be seen as a potential fill in the gaps, if not a rewrite of it.
> 
> unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. shit's going to start hitting the fan next chapter, i just had to lay down the foundation. please be aware there are references to drug use! (lincoln's!) thank you for taking the time to read and kudos! ♥

She’s never known the inside of the Ark until now. What she had imagined to be an amazing labyrinth, one that would require her to use Ariadne’s string, she finds she no longer feels any desire to explore. It’s dull and broken, horrible and confining to be inside. It’s stuffy and humid and just like the space beneath a floorboard.

She stomps her way to the medical bay. It’s the only place she can think of him choosing to be, the one place in the Ark, besides her own bunk, that would be safe for him.

It’s been a week since they’ve returned from the mountain, a quick week that’s fired past her like bullets. Octavia’s spent it alone. Outside, beneath the stars, watching Monty dig at dirt, turn it over, feel it in his hands. She’s touched it and felt nothing different, but she hadn’t been born to be a farmer like him.

She helps him, digging a garden beneath the moon. But when the sun’s up, he sleeps. With an invitation to take her bunk and warm it, she doubts Monty will take her up on her offer of a comfortable sleep. It’s too close to Jasper and the darkness of the mountain bunker. She suspects he’s gone to Raven’s workstation to fall asleep beneath the sun filtered through her crappy windows.

Left alone, it reminds her of how she’s lost her shadow. At the heels of her feet, for the first two days since they returned, Octavia always bumped into Lincoln each time she turned around to retrace her steps. It’s taken her too long to realise that safe and warm presence behind her is gone.

Once she spots Abby with a crutch beneath her arm, balancing her weight on both legs just fine, she walks over to her. 

“Where’s Lincoln?”

Sharing a glance with Jackson, she passes her crutch over to him. 

Abby takes her by the elbow gently, steering her into the corridor. Medical isn’t as busy as it had been before. There’s space to breathe and walk. Most of the beds are still full, but she can spy an empty one or two, ready for the next person to fall down a rabbit hole. 

The corridor’s stuffy, despite the cool breeze running through. Octavia ignores how trapped she feels, despite knowing this corridor is bigger than any cage.

Abby looks at her seriously. Octavia tries her best not to shiver. “He’s in another room.”

Her brows furrow. “Another room? What do you mean another room?”

“It’s okay, Octavia,” Abby reassures. It’s then Octavia realises her throat is tight and her voice even more so. Taking a deep breath in, she tries to ground herself. It’s impossible to remain settled when Abby opens her mouth again; her soft and gentle voice only manages to raise her hackles even more, “Lincoln needs to get the drug out of his system. He’s much safer doing so in the other room.”

Her brows furrow. Octavia looks at Abby and counts she has three heads branching off from her neck. “Where’s this room?”

Abby looks her over. It’s like she’s trying to discern if Octavia’s a little girl, requiring shelter from the bad world outside. She thinks to remind Abby _she_ is now the person people hide from. A storm that refuses to leave until it’s found its target, she’s a cyclone that never gives up. A gust of wind that never relents.

She feels it burn inside of her chest, starting as a small spark before it begins to crackle into an inferno. Before she can grit her teeth, Abby cocks her head to the side.

Octavia follows her down the corridor, taking a left at the nearest branching of hallways. Abby lets go of her elbow, walking slightly in front of her. On her heels, Octavia looks around wildly, trying to memorise the corridor, searching for a hint of Lincoln, of why he’s separated from the rest of them. 

It’s a long journey. She hadn’t realised the corridors of the Ark were so long. Like a limb of Bellamy, she wonders if it’ll ever end.

The lights are still bright above them, but the number of people they pass begins to thin until there’s no one at the end of the corridor. The people have disappeared off the branches of hallways, disappearing into rooms, around corners, and even into the bright light of the globes above them.

Octavia looks around, feels her throat burn from how desperate she is to remember this. How many steps had she taken before she ended up by a door with a large and deep line scratched into it? How many doors has she passed? How many corridors did she watch people slip into?

Abby stops in front of a door. There’s nothing on it to separate it from any other door but a number. _302_. Freshly painted. It looks a little like the numbers of Clarke’s hand drawn maps, but lacks the delicate curve of her hand.

“Three hundred and two?” She sounds breathless as she stares at the back of Abby’s head.

The door is made of solid metal. There’s no window, just as she remembers from home. She imagines what the inside must look like. Light and dull, spacious yet confining all the same. It’s not her door, but she feels as though she’s about to be shoved inside, stuffed away so no one can find her again.

Abby’s back is to her. Her hand presses against the door, palm flat, as her head remains bowed. Octavia doesn’t understand what she’s doing, can’t fathom what she’s thinking, but once Abby turns around to face her, she recognises her stance.

She’s blocking her from reaching the handle.

“Lincoln’s in here,” she says. Her voice sounds as grave as she looks. “I can’t let you inside.”

“Why not?”

“You know what that drug is capable of doing to him, Octavia,” she begins slowly. Feeling more like a child with each passing second, that flicker of heat inside of her chest begins to spark once more. “He was injected again.”

“Again?” Octavia’s heart flutters to a stop. “How? He’s been with _me_!”

Abby lets her head drop for a moment, as if trying to find the patience to deal with her. Octavia’s fingers curl tightly into her palms. “He’s addicted to the drug,” she says. “We need to make sure it’s out of his system. He’s a danger to anyone he comes into contact with.”

“He’s _okay_ now. He’s Lincoln again.” She _knows_ he is. Walking beside her, hand in hand — sneaking off into the woods nearby, everything had felt _right_. Returning to her as the man she had found to be an inspiring hero, someone she wished to emulate in her strength and her footsteps, Lincoln had never once wavered in the time they’d spent together in the aftermath of the mountain crumbling.

Sometimes, Octavia forgets Lincoln’s a good actor. Sometimes, she forgets she closes her eyes to what she doesn’t wish to see.

Peeling back the layers of the canopy, she can’t recall a moment of Lincoln not being _Lincoln_.

Abby lifts her gaze to her. With the slight tilt of her head, Octavia can see she’s stepped into her role of being the bearer of bad news. “He asked us to monitor him, Octavia,” she says gently. 

Something within the request strikes her. Like being hit with the end of a gun, she feels a bruise begin to blossom on her cheekbone. She doesn’t realise she’s shaking her head until she tastes blood in her mouth from biting her bottom lip too hard.

“He doesn’t want to hurt you,” Abby continues. “We’re trying to break him from his conditioning. As per his request.”

“He would never hurt me.” It’s a quick defense, one Octavia hates the taste and sound of as it leaves her tongue and is shaped by her voice. She shakes her head vehemently now. “He’s okay now. He’s fine —”

Octavia doesn’t know what happens. She hears an indecipherable yell shake the corridor. It’s hollow and empty, and it strikes her right in the chest. Abby’s face doesn't even flinch as it lights up the corridor they’re in and shakes her to her very core.

It dies down, eventually. But it never stops reverberating through her body.

When she realises there’s a tear running down her cheek, Octavia wipes at it angrily with the back of her hand. Shaking on her feet, she thinks to lunge at Abby, but finds her body is stuck in place. “What are you doing to him?”

“Helping him,” Abby says, patiently. Octavia thinks she hesitates. In hindsight, she’ll realise she did before she speaks again. “We’re trying to copy the sound they used to control him. He wants to break out of it.”

“Lincoln told you this?” Octavia can hear her voice breaking as she wipes at her face again. 

Abby nods. The way she looks at her is pitiful. It’s the expression Clarke once wore. Where she had been met with blue eyes, pitying her for her life, she now sees it reflected in the dark of Abby’s.

Octavia shakes her head and takes a few steps backward. “I need —” 

Lincoln hadn’t told her of this. Lincoln hadn’t expressed his fears. Lincoln — 

She hears him scream. High-pitched and guttural, she almost bends over to hold herself, curling into a ball so tight no one, not even the demons in the shadows, could ever hope to reach her.

A warrior never runs away from a fight. A warrior runs _to_ one, swords raised, teeth bared, a scream burning their throat. 

But Octavia isn’t Indra, no matter how hard she tries to emulate her. Indra wouldn’t run. Indra wouldn’t be here.

She doesn’t hear herself. She doesn’t know if she even finishes her thought. But Abby knows. Abby knows everything, from how the cells in her body are working, how her heart is hammering in her chest; Abby would be able to tell her what’s happening to her, why she’s not standing and fighting, beating down that door until her fists are bloodied.

Abby can tell her everything found in a textbook. But she’s not the one who can tell her why it is she’s afraid.

Octavia remains still, bolted to the floor. With her eyes wide and heart racing in her chest, she doesn’t feel Abby’s gaze on her when she turns on her heel and runs.

*

She doesn’t call out for him beyond the door. Octavia knows he’s inside.

With her hands shaking, she takes a deep breath. Her throat goes dry before she realises she needs to exhale, feeling her entire body go slack, the buzzing of her skin remaining in her muscles. Looking down at her hands, she tries to still them. Counts to three, orders herself to stop.

She can’t control herself. Her hands, straight and fingers fanned, continue to shake. But she can hear what’s on the other side of the door. What she can’t control has always worked in her favour. Unable to control what happens to Bellamy inside Mount Weather, Octavia had busied herself until her hands had become blistered, trying to make sacrifices to those gods, like Zeus and Hades, hoping against everything she knew that she’d be able to control his fate.

She figures this is the price she pays for it. Being able to dictate his fate, seeing him returned safely to her, she’s unable to still her hands.

Opening it, she leaves it ajar as she stands at the entrance. Her bunk is plain, just as their home had been. Aside from the cot and a few clothes they’d given her after they’d tried to clean up the insides of the Ark, her room is nondescript.

It doesn’t scream of her. With no weapons lining the walls, no dirt on them or the ground, it’s just another box. Another prison cell, but this time it’s not beneath the floorboards.

His back is to her. Octavia wonders if she’ll ever stop feeling relieved he’s here.

Holding up a black shirt, Octavia knows what Bellamy’s looking at. It strikes her like a faint slap against her cheek. The bruising’s unsure if it wants to swell or even stain her skin. Octavia doesn’t know how to feel; there’s no harm in looking at something. As she had looked at the stars once, she’d found that there was nothing to be afraid in merely admiring. 

But she finds that she is afraid. A hand reaches inside of her chest to squeeze her heart, holding it tightly between its fingers as its own personal hostage.

“Are you going to put that on?”

Bellamy doesn’t answer.

Octavia takes a tentative step forward. Her arms remain hanging by her sides. They feel useless. For the first time since hitting the ground running, she feels useless when it comes to Bellamy. Figuring out what he’s thinking, feeling, even wanting.

She waits a moment, despite knowing he won’t answer. Trying to keep her voice neutral, it sounds strained and a little too sharp in her attempt to be nonchalant, “Have you accepted it yet?”

“No.”

Anger bubbles inside of her chest. She doesn’t understand why she snaps, “Why not?”

Bellamy’s quiet for a moment. He turns to look at her. He looks tired. His hair’s a mess, even though his face is clean. There’s a nasty bruise underneath his chin and on his shoulder. She’s seen what his chest looks like, his back and legs — sometimes she wishes she’d walked away, let Jackson take care of her when Bellamy had dragged her to Medical once realising she’d skipped out on being assessed.

Like brother, like sister, she guesses. 

At least, when he looks at her, Bellamy doesn’t seem tired of her presence. “I don’t want to accept it if you don’t want me to.”

She scoffs. “That’s stupid, Bellamy.”

“Is it?” His brows furrow together as he turns to look at her. The uniform’s ignored, left on the cot she’s only slept in once. He turns to face her properly, looking at her like he always has. Bellamy’s always seen her. For the girl she is, reluctantly for the warrior she’s become. “I don’t want you to look at me the way you do them.”

“You’re my brother,” she frowns. “You’re different. You’re not like them. It’s not important how I look at you.”

“It is, O.” His brows furrow together for a moment. She wonders if she had imagined his confusion. “You’re important to me. This,” he gestures to the Guard uniform. “This isn’t.”

Octavia presses her teeth together hard. Feeling his words take the form of hands, and their strength, he pushes her. Jabs his fingers into her shoulders to shove her where she stands now. A ball of fury, of tangled feelings and thoughts, she realises, now, that she’s Ariadne’s string. She can’t guide anyone. He can’t rely on her to guide him.

That isn’t how they’ve ever worked.

Her voice sounds hard as she reminds him, “The Guard ruined our lives, Bell.”

“I know,” he says, sounding patient.

“And you’re considering joining them,” she says. Her hands ball into fists. Knuckles white, she feels them unfurl, fingers fanning out like Icarus’ wings. Instead of burning, she doesn’t even think she melts. Her voice softens when she asks, “Why?”

He’s quiet for a moment. It isn’t long. She thinks he’s taking a moment to think, to give her an answer that isn’t flippant. He’s rehearsed his words of stalling, procrastinating on giving Kane an answer. It’s been a week since he’d offered. It’s been seven days of complete and utter peace. And, yet, Octavia still feels as though she’s fighting a war. 

“This is my chance to change the way things are, O.” When she looks up at him, she sees Bellamy’s looking at her with a pinched expression. “Stop the Guard from getting out of hand. Be heard by them. It doesn’t have to be us versus them anymore.”

Octavia remains quiet. Bellamy comes to stand before her. It isn’t imposing. His shadow, regardless of how overwhelming it can be sometimes, has always been protective. Unlike the floorboards where the darkness had scared her, Octavia isn’t afraid.

She’s afraid of the light. From whatever he doesn’t let her protect him from, she finds herself chanting _I’m not afraid._

Bellamy continues, “This isn’t _theirs_ anymore. It’s ours. We built this camp, O. Those kids out there — they don’t want to go back to the way it was on the Ark.” He shakes his head. “I don’t.”

_I don’t want to be hidden under a floorboard anymore._

She shifts and tilts her head to look up at him. “What are you planning to do?”

“Nothing,” he says easily. Her brows furrow in bemusement. “I’m not going to accept it if it means I’m going to be without you, O. It’s you and me.”

_It’s you and me._

Octavia’s quiet for a long moment.

Letting her gaze drop, her voice sounds small, “I don’t want that to change.”

She hears him move. Standing closer to her now, his entire presence is warm. She’s missed it. Even though she’s hugged him, held onto him so tight she was reassured he was completely real, she wants to do it again. Wrap her arms around her big brother and remember that this isn’t just a dream. 

His voice is warm and soft, “Me neither.”

Octavia’s vision swims. She doesn’t look up at him immediately. Feeling his gaze on her, she lifts her hand to wipe at her eyes hurriedly in the hope he’ll blink and miss the movement. The hardness of the back of her hand against her eyes only makes the blur of her vision worse. 

“They killed Mom, Bellamy.” She sounds like a little girl.

His hand curves around her shoulder. She sees his feet on the floor. Boots dirtied with mud, cracked with it and dry leaves and grass, she thinks to step on his feet as she did when she was younger. Withholding the impulse, she lifts her gaze, but only to his chest. 

“I know.”

It’s easier to speak to him when she can look where his heart is. If she presses her hand against his chest, she knows she can feel it. Instead, her hands remain by her sides on purpose. She’s afraid of what they’ll do, of how hard they’ll cling to his dark blue shirt.

“They took me away from you.”

His hand curls into her shoulder more. “I know.”

Finally, she lifts her gaze. When she blinks, her vision clears as she feels tears slip quickly down her cheeks. Some catch on her eyelashes, but she doesn’t wipe them away. Quietly, her voice breaks, “I don’t want you to become one of them.”

Bellamy nods, but doesn’t withdraw. She doesn’t know why she expects him to. 

His hand glides up and down her arm. She feels his thumb brush over her cheek a few times, tidying her up. She thinks to laugh at it, but she doesn’t feel any of her amusement, so misplaced within the moment, bubble inside of her.

“I’ll tell Kane no.”

Her eyes move past him to the cot. The dark uniform. When she looks at Bellamy, she sees the heroes Mom told them about. From Heracles to Theseus, she doubts that they sacrificed as much as him. She hadn’t understood it while being on the ground. She hadn’t understood it on the Ark.

But now she can see it. Here she is, with a pair of scissors, prepared to sever the string of his fate. The string that may lead them to a better place. One where Bellamy’s of use, the very person he’s always wanted to be.

She thinks of Mount Weather, and how it’d been his decision. To go inside himself and not send anyone else. To sacrifice his own life for the sake of possibly failing to get their people out.

If anyone had ordered Bellamy to do it, she thinks she would’ve razed the world.

Wiping at her face, she stands taller. Swallowing, she hears it echo around them. But when she speaks, that little girl is gone. “I don’t want you to say no.” He looks at her quizzically. For a moment, she’s even surprised she’s said it. 

She wants him to decline it. Reject the Guard. Crawl inside of them another way, the Bellamy way. He’s good at infiltrating, at playing a part that has people trusting him. But Octavia knows it isn’t right. 

Closing her eyes, she inhales deeply through her nose. Feeling her fingers bite into the palms of her hands, she curls them as she gathers herself. Losing Bellamy to the Guard isn’t an option. But losing Bellamy to himself will be if she chooses this door.

She thinks of Lincoln behind that door. Unable to help him, save him, even understand why it is he never told her. She would’ve convinced him otherwise, crawled inside of his head, promising it’s the two of them against the world, able to combat a drug she doesn’t understand.

Grounders never give up. Grounders protect and fight. Warriors defend. And heroes slay sea monsters, cut the head off a gorgon, and retrieve golden apples from an impossibly difficult garden to navigate.

Icarus built wings. Octavia hopes the ones Bellamy chooses won’t melt beneath the hot sun.

“I want you to say yes,” she says. Opening her eyes slowly, she releases a breath. Looking up at him, she finds her words come easier, even though they remain heavy, cautious. “And I want you to change things.” 

She wipes at her cheek again, wondering if she’s smeared dirt on her face. Her fingers have been so unclean, taken and possessed by the ground she’s still in awe of. She doesn’t care if she looks dirty. She tries to wipe away any evidence of her upset, wanting to appear strong before him with her back straight and her expression defiant. “Just don’t become Kane’s bitch.”

“I have no plans to,” he says. He cracks a smile, and she feels as though she sun is within her bunk. 

Mom always warned them about the sun, of the dangers of flying too close to it. But Octavia wonders if Mom ever knew that she was Icarus and Bellamy was the sun she warned them both about. She knows he won’t burn her. The wings she’s built, they were never destined to see her fall, not when he’s watching over her. 

His face brightens, but she can still see the cracks. Parts of him need to be uncovered again, see the stone he’s built around himself melt away once more. Octavia doesn’t push. She feels her mouth curve upward into a smile, as brilliant as his, a reflection of his own contentment now. 

He nudges her with his hand on her shoulder. “Besides, O. I’ve got you looking out for me.”

Octavia wraps her arms around him, clutching him to her chest. She laughs and it breaks off into a sob. Holding him so tightly, she can feel his heartbeat reverberate throughout her entire being.

And then, into his chest, she says, “I need to talk to you about Lincoln.”


	5. Raven II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _once upon a time, raven had been important. on the ground, she's nothing._ or the one where raven believes every bad thing that happens is permanent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note i've been updating the tags of this fic as i post each chapter, since i can never quite tell what the themes will be as i write despite outlining most of everything. i'll always warn if there's content in the chapter that's described graphically. so far, everything is subtle and open for interpretation.
> 
> i know many people don't like wick, so please be aware that he's in the beginning of this chapter. he'll be featured as needed; i can promise the wick/raven will be in small doses as i try to dismantle it in the most organic way possible. 
> 
> and now, for shit to hit the fan! the one thing i always wanted since the introduction of the grounders inside of mount weather is this (or what will be featured in the next chapter!). i'm thinking of trying to update this twice a week, but we'll see how i go.
> 
> this is unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thanks for reading! ♥

Once upon a time, Raven had been important.

She’d always been the person called first. The person who was sent to do things, like go out into space, check out the Ark’s exterior, see if any aliens lingered on the roof. The latter had been a joke between her and Wick, and even though she’s still vehement the only alien was the boy standing before her, she always looked with clear eyes and an intensely rapid heart, anticipating meeting another life out in space.

On the ground, she’s nothing. 

Tempted to give herself the name-tag of _No one_ , she’s left alone. Her workstation collects dust. The radios crackle if she bothers to bring them to life, but with no one on the other side interested in talking to her, she leaves them on her workbench.

Her door remains open, letting in the fresh sounds and air to remind her of how stifling her workstation is. Even though she's cracked the window open, felt the sunlight press against her face, even the breeze that refuses to sweep along the corridors brush against her cheek, she knows she's a ghost.

Pulling herself out of her cot, Raven forgoes tying the brace around her leg. She knows it's stupid not to, but she pulls herself to her feet with little struggle. The exertion leaves her feeling too tired to even stand, but Raven pushes through it.

Making it to her workbench to pull herself onto her stool is good enough. It’s something she thinks she deserves an award for. A freaking gold medal. Maybe even a cool title, like _Zero-G, Spacewalker_. Except she’s not walking through space illegally or with a boy who had held her entire world in his hands before he’d ever thought himself capable of crushing it.

There’s so much space in her workstation, despite its clutter, that she sometimes feels as though she’s outside of the Ark despite being inside of it. She floats, unable to keep her feet on the ground. Pulling herself onto the stool takes too much work. Curving her fingers around her leg to move it so she’s not slipping off the chair is aggravating.

Raven does it, though. Just as she’d pushed through the pain of being rejected for her placement in the beginning, Raven knows if she continues to move, pushes herself until she’s practically sleepwalking her way through studying and memorising mechanical parts of the ship, that she’ll reclaim her title as being the best Zero-G the Ark has ever seen.

A Zero-G with a broken leg and one that’s slowly repairing itself.

“Knock, knock.” Wick’s fist bumps against the door loudly. Too loudly. She thinks it thumps inside of her head.

Raven pulls at her shoulders, pressing her back into a straight line as she tries to stop her laboured breathing. Smoothing her features, she wipes the pinch of her expression away with a press of her hand. 

Curling her fingers around the chair’s seat, she looks over her shoulder at him. The smile she gives him is small and pained; if Kyle sees it, he doesn’t mention it as he walks in.

“You weren’t at lunch,” he says. Bringing her a plate of food, of greens and purples and a sick looking red, he places it in front of her on her workbench. It’s a salad with a cut of meat. She can see the ribs of it, embedded beneath the thick layer of cooked flesh. It’s the most she’s eaten in weeks. Even though she can feel her appetite working itself up into a frenzy for it, her entire being beginning to crave what the meat must taste like with how it shines beneath her bright lights, she pushes it away from her.

“I’m not hungry,” she says, and tilts her head away from him.

Kyle stands beside her. She can feel his gaze hard on her face, trying to see her expression. Biting her lip, she keeps her head turned from him.

She thinks she can hear him sigh, but she doesn't care.

“Raven …” He starts quietly. She wants it to start and finish there. It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him so. _Let that be the end of it._ But she finds that something within her stops her from pushing him away with a great, hard shove.

From the corner of her eye, she can see him try and gain her attention by leaning closer. She only keeps her head turned, ignoring the desire to face him.

“You _can_ talk to me,” he says. Except, she can’t. Talking to Kyle Wick has only ever included shit-talking him and brainstorming with him. There’s no in-between. They’re not friends. They’re not the type of people who talk about their feelings, their thoughts, even their opinions. 

She wants to say it. With how tired she feels from having moved from her cot to her bed, the distance so short now that she looks at it, she finds that she’s much _kinder_ in her self-wallowing. She remains quiet.

He doesn’t. Wick’s never really been good at taking a hint. There's a quip there, one that belongs between them, about him and girls, and how he’s never gotten one because they’re not made of the parts an engineer could understand. 

She's not a mathematical problem. Sometimes, she wishes she was.

“You’ve been distant.” His voice is meant to be kind, but she can hear the accusation beneath his words. Maybe she puts it there. With him telling her to get her shit together in order to be with him, she finds that she applies that to everything he says from now on. Everything's a damn criticism, even when it's a joke at the expense of someone else.

He pulls out the stool beside her. It drags along the ground, screaming. “I’ve been worried.”

“Don’t,” she says. She doesn’t look at him. With her gaze unfocused, she looks to the ground instead. “You don't need to worry about me. I’m fine.”

“You're not wearing your brace.”

“ _Your_ brace," she says through gritted teeth. 

He sighs. She can hear the impatience in his body language, and finds it verified by his tone, “What’s this about, Raven? You can make your own damn brace if it’s really pissing you off.”

Her voice comes out too even, “It’s not about the damn brace.”

“Then what's it about?”

Raven turns to look at him, her gaze hard. Her face doesn't pinch, doesn't twist; something inside her chest twists itself over and into itself. There's a pain in her leg she's trying desperately to ignore. The pain medication can make it go away temporarily.

 _Temporarily_ she can forget she can’t use her leg. _Temporarily_ she can forget she hadn’t weighed them down in the tunnels. _Temporarily_ she can pretend that she’s the best damn Zero-G on the broken Ark instead of being the shattered thing the Ark isn’t. It’s being rebuilt. Raven can’t feel any dedication to her leg being constructed again.

Wick had been a temporary thing. And he doesn’t get that. Doesn't see the permanency of what it is she can feel wrap around her leg in the form of a brace when she can’t feel anything at all.

He’s not her brace. Desperate to be it, he only clips at her flesh and wounds her.

“ _Nothing_ ,” she sighs. The words feel hard against her ears. She wonders if he flinches, if the invincible and intelligent Kyle Wick can discern that there’s blades being tossed his way. She turns to look away from him. Shifting on her stool, she gives him her back deliberately. "Thanks for the food.”

She can sense he's still there. He lingers for a few moments. She counts to ten Bellatrixes before she hears him move on the stool. It scrapes, gently, against the hard surface of her floor. His feet don't follow immediately after, but once they do, she knows he’s no longer looking through her, trying to find the girl she never really was.

When he's gone, she looks at the plate of food sitting temptingly in front of her.

Instead of taking a bite, she pushes herself off her stool, lands too hard on her good leg, and pulls herself toward her cot to collapse on the mattress again.

*

She doesn’t get up for a few hours.

When she does, she’s determined to do it _right_.

There’s a saying: Get out of the bed on the right side, and you’ll have a good day. The wrong side, and you’re in for a shitload of bad luck.

It’s something Mrs Collins used to tell her. She remembers how she’d always tried to get out of the right side of the bed. The literal right side. Misunderstanding her words, Raven gets them more than ever now.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Raven’s clicking her brace into place, over the fabric of her jeans, when Octavia storms through the door.

Without a knock, she appears before her. Like wind being summoned by that god in the sky she’s sure Octavia would know, she stands before her, a warm and pleasant shadow Raven feels like hiding away from.

She doesn’t acknowledge her immediately. Waiting to see how patient Octavia is, she pulls at the fabric of her pants, straightening it as best she can now that it’s trapped within Wick’s metal jaw.

Peering up at her, Raven leans back on her hands, feeling them press against the soft sheets of her unmade cot. The smile on her face doesn’t feel forced, but it doesn’t feel completely natural in its wide curve, either.

“Hey,” Octavia says before Raven can even think to greet her. Her smile is small, childish, almost like the girl she’d once been. 

The bump of her hair at the front looks more like a bird’s nest, fly-aways sticking up at all ends. The girl Octavia had been begins and ends with her gaze and her smile and the way she uses her hands.

Octavia's face is clean, almost like it had been when she’d first crashed on Earth. But there’s faint grey beneath her eyes, sloped over her nose. Her hair has small knots in it where it’s been braided and forgotten, left unkempt with how she doubts Octavia's thought to brush it before she rests her head on her pillow.

She likes this look better. It’s a split between who Raven thinks she is: Girl who had pushed herself to survive outside of the shadows, and a warrior who would do anything to see her brother come home.

Raven finds that her mouth remains curved upward naturally. Her voice sounds warm to her own ears, “What are you doing here, Warrior Girl?”

Octavia doesn’t look around her workstation. Keeping her eyes on Raven, she presses her lips together, as if she’s pretending to be shy. The thought almost makes Raven laugh. “I wanted to see how you were doing,” she says. Something in Raven’s chest sinks. Her face must, since Octavia’s quick to add, “You haven’t been outside to see what Monty’s doing. We thought maybe you were …” She shrugs her shoulders and looks around. “Doing … Raven stuff.”

“Raven stuff,” she repeats, sounding amused.

Octavia smiles. “You know what I mean.”

She does. ‘Raven stuff’ is the kind of stuff only Raven can do. That’s what she assumes Octavia’s definition would be.

She doesn’t have the heart to tell her she’s no longer the only person who can do that ‘Raven stuff’ any longer.

Instead, she asks, “What’s Monty doing?”

Moving back a few steps, Octavia lifts her stool from its place tucked beneath the edge of the workbench and brings it to sit in front of her. With her legs searching for a step to rest on, she finds nothing to support herself on. Instead, they end up hanging over the sides while her hands, knuckles bruised and scraped, curve around the edge of the seat.

“You’ll have to come out and see,” she smiles.

Raven rolls her eyes. “I will,” she says. To herself, she adds, _I promise._ Someday, she’ll see what Monty Green is working on, unless he brings it to her window here she can gaze outside of her cage and admire his handiwork.

“Sorry I haven’t been around,” Octavia says, quietly. She lowers her gaze, almost looking ashamed. Raven finds herself uncertain. Confused, even, by how Octavia seems to take ownership of being distant when she knows she’s been flittering between her big brother and her big love. “I’ve been meaning to come see you, but I thought you’d want to be left alone.”

“It’s okay,” Raven says. Her brows pull together as she looks at the younger girl. Octavia won’t lift her eyes to her. “You know it’s cool, Octavia. I know you’re busy with Bellamy and Lincoln.”

Octavia’s body seems to grow smaller. She doesn’t understand how she does it, but Raven witnesses it. She’s a short, petite girl naturally, but with her sitting on the stool, above her, Raven watches as Octavia’s shoulders remain hunched in a way that’s meant to reduce her size. She takes up so much space with how she positions her body, legs spread, hands clinging to the seat between them, and her hair a mess. Octavia shouldn’t be trying to recede when she’s only just begun to spread her wings.

She thinks to ask, but Raven figures if Octavia wants her to know, she’ll remove that floorboard and let her in.

“Kane offered Bellamy a position in the Guard,” Octavia says. Lifting her gaze to Raven’s, she finds that her expression is indiscernible. Or maybe Raven just doesn’t know how to read Octavia. It isn’t like she’s taken the time to get to know her favourite colour or time of day. 

“I know,” Raven says. She remembers telling him to take it. Cling to it with his hands like his fingers are claws. Don’t let it go, or else they’re all fucked. Octavia’s brow arches, unable to follow her thoughts. It isn’t like she’s been leaving discernible footprints for anyone to follow. “I saw Kane approach him. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”

Octavia doesn’t respond. Raven doesn’t know if she’s said anything wrong with how she watches her gaze fall to the bed.

Tentatively, she approaches it like she does walking. Awkwardly. Hobbling. Bumping into everything in sight. “Are you …”

Instead of giving Octavia a chance to reply, she concludes it herself. Of course she isn’t. From what she’s overheard from Bellamy and Octavia fighting, from what the other delinquents have said of her, and what she knows herself, Octavia Blake probably doesn’t like it one bit. Hadn’t Bellamy been Guard once before?

Shaking her head, she dismisses what she had refused to finish. “Right, stupid question.”

“It’s not stupid,” Octavia says. Her voice sounds hard. When Raven looks up at her, she isn’t so sure if Octavia’s angry with her. It feels misplaced, as though it’s being thrown in the wrong direction. Her gaze is hard, boring into her. Intense in a manner that sees Raven want to sit taller and harden herself behind a stone wall of armour. But with the way she looks at her, it’s as if she’s trying to dig for something. 

Raven’s seen that look before. It used to be her expression when it came to figuring out a puzzle that was out of her element.

When Octavia speaks again, her voice is soft, girlish, “Is it?”

Raven shakes her head. She doesn’t need time to think. The answer, despite being one that contradicts her own opinion, her own belief that this is a _good_ thing, is one she knows the answer to. For Octavia, it’s not stupid for her to not be okay with Bellamy being part of the Guard. “No,” she says, sincerely. “It isn’t.”

Octavia opens her mouth, but what comes out of it is a knock. Glancing over her shoulder, her voice shifts into a warm song, “Bellamy.” Sliding off the stool, Octavia approaches him like she’s made of wind, a storm that refuses to knock down the one person in the world it tries to protect.

With Octavia no longer blocking her view, Raven sees him. Dressed in a shade she’s not really used to seeing him in, the uniform seems more darker than she remembers. There’s scrapes still on his face, lining his nose, his cheeks, even beneath his neck. They make him look like the Bellamy she knows, attainable and grounded. The black shirt with its thick and padded shoulders and the black pants make him seem like a stranger. But there’s something about the sight of Bellamy in the Guard uniform that feels _right_.

Standing slowly, Raven takes a step and presses her palm against the seat of the stool to steady herself. Watching Octavia touch Bellamy’s arms, inspecting his uniform, possibly seeing if it fits well, she remains quiet. This isn’t a moment she’s meant to be witnessing, but she takes it all in, locks it away in her memory like it’s the inside of a mountain’s tunnel system.

The way Bellamy smiles down at Octavia, almost embarrassed, is a sight Raven finds she memorises without realising.

“You look good,” she says.

Bellamy looks up at her with a roll of his eyes. Octavia takes a step back and turns to look at her, her expression slightly more brighter than it had been before. There’s a crack in the armour she wears now, spying it in her eyes. Her lips may curve into a smile, her hands may wander over him as she pulls at his sleeves and brushes the fabric of his shoulders down as though the uniform wasn’t tailored for his shape, but Octavia’s eyes are wild and frightened.

She wonders if Bellamy notices it.

Octavia moves away from Bellamy and steals the other stool from underneath her workbench. Sitting, she watches him; she wonders if this is how it’d been in their home on the Ark, with Octavia looking up at him like he was the entire world.

Bellamy takes a few steps into the room, a hand pulling at his sleeve like he’s nervous.

“Sorry,” he says, gesturing with a small sweep of his hand toward his sister, “I just wanted to find O.”

“You found me,” she says. Pulling a smile, Raven sees how the curve relaxes into a real, relaxed one when Bellamy turns to grin at her.

Looking at Raven, he breathes in deeply, like he needs to lower himself from the pedestal they both know he’s never placed himself on. “I just wanted to say thanks. For the push.” It sounds like it pains him to even say it, with the way he breathes it out.

She doubts it’s pain, though. With the way Bellamy holds himself, she thinks it’s nerves. Needing someone to believe in him when he doubts himself until it shakes the earth he walks on. She gets it. He’d calmed the ground for her once.

“Anytime,” she says.

Catching Octavia looking between them with a crease to her brow, Raven finds she opens her mouth to speak, to fill in the blanks, as if she owes her an explanation. As if she’s been caught red-handed with something that isn’t hers between her fingers.

“I like this uniform better.”

His face doesn’t fall, but she can see how his body seems to tense. Something inside of Bellamy shifts enough for her to see that that had been the wrong thing to say.

It'd been a joke. A poor one. There’s a reason why she’s not the one with all the jokes.

Opening her mouth in a bid to scramble to fix it, the inside of her workstation bangs with a loud, hurried tempo against the door. Leaning to the side, she sees Miller knocking. Dressed in his jeans and a new shirt that fits him well, he looks as though he’s run across the entire campsite.

His eyes dart from her to settle on Bellamy.

“You need to get out here,” he says, sounding frantic. Bellamy turns his back to her to look at Miller. Octavia pushes herself off her chair, entire body tense, straight, ready for a fight. Raven would move, but she’s bolted to the floor by her brace. “Now.”

Looking back at her, Bellamy looks confused. With a wave of her hand, like he needs permission, or even a shove to see him move, she says, “Go.”

But the wrong Blake moves.

Octavia’s out the door in a flash. Running by Miller, her boots are a loud echo along the corridor until she’s too far away for the Ark to carry her sound.

Raven can’t remember if she even had a weapon on her.

She takes a step to move, and that seems to be enough to push Bellamy into action. Instead of walking off without her, he takes a step toward her, holds his hand out to gesture for her to come. Miller doesn’t seem to know what to do, but ends up leaving, chasing after Octavia belatedly.

“Come on,” Bellamy says. She lets him grab her arm, holding her elbow firmly as she lets herself lean on him like he’s a crutch.

It should hurt her ego. But to have someone walk beside her rather than _by_ her, it’s enough to make her feel something hard and unbreakable, the thing that hadn’t moved for days, shatter inside of her.

Even though their progress is slow, Raven feels like she’s moving fast. Almost akin to a raven in flight, Bellamy’s her broken wing mended. 

People inside of the Ark move by them, pushing through the wind, never once bumping into her as Bellamy seems to be enough of a force to intimidate them to move to the opposite wall.

They all run in the same direction. To the mouth of the Ark.

Once they’re closer to the entrance, she can hear voices. It’s difficult to see what’s happening, with so many people crowded around the lip of the broken space ship.

Abby’s is the loudest, authoritative and well-practiced. “This is a violation of the peace treaty. You need to step _back_.”

Raven doubts whoever it is violating the poorest plan in the history of time has stepped back. She’s not a history buff, but she knows how people in this world work.

“What do you want?” Kane asks, calmly. Raven can only imagine the look Abby tosses toward him like a blade. Annoyed. Aggravated. They’ve never worked as well as a team with her wanting to move left while he tries to trick her into going right.

She hears words in another language. The Grounder language. She doesn’t understand it, but she wonders if Bellamy does. His entire expression changes. The grip on her elbow strengthens, as though he needs some sort of anchor to keep him there.

Then she hears Octavia’s voice echo around them like a sharp clap of thunder.

“ _Okteivia kom Skaikru_ —”

She hears Bellamy’s fear and anger twist the syllables of her name, “Octavia.”

Letting go of her elbow, Bellamy shoulders his way through the crowd. Raven follows, finding that the sea he’s parted remains that way, leaving her an easy path to struggle along.

Once she’s through the thick of it, she stands at the front. Jasper’s at the corner of her eye, barely holding it together. His skin is a hot pink, his hands balled into fists. He doesn’t have a weapon. She finds the tenseness settling in her body seeps away at the thought.

There’s a pressure on her shoulder. Turning to look, she finds Monty standing on her other side. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“What’s —”

“Grounder,” he says. “From the mountain.”

Raven’s brow arches, unable to follow why there’s familiarity in his tone. She wants to ask him why he doesn’t sound scared. Why he sounds like he knows what’s about to happen.

When she looks ahead of her, she notices, then, that the large gates are closed. Beyond them is the world as she remembers it being, the trees tall, the grass untameable. The Guard stands with guns pointed at the woman who stands before them on the other side. Dressed in what appears to be light grey rags, she remains standing tall, unfazed. Raven wonders if there’s even an inch of fear to be found within her.

The Grounder speaks, but her words are too soft, like the wind doesn’t want the rest of the Ark to hear her.

Octavia stands in front of both Abby and Kane, undermining their power with her small stature. She’s never felt so big before. Like a giant, she stands her ground, body tense and tall as she never once wavers. Raven can see Bellamy approaching her slowly, steps uncertain. Her voice remains hard and sharp as she projects, “You’re not speaking to my brother.”

“O,” he says, loud enough for Raven to hear. Despite the hand on her shoulder, Octavia doesn’t acknowledge Bellamy’s touched her. “It’s okay.”

She looks at him then. Raven can see the confusion in the crease of her brow. Octavia looks up at Bellamy with a fright she thinks she can understand. Fingers wrap around her heart, squeezing it as she finds her own features mimic that of Octavia’s.

Bellamy steps forward, in front of Octavia, but doesn’t overshadow her. Raven finds she moves forward, just a small step, as though she needs to _do_ something to defend him. Save him again, guide him through the mechanics of the inside of Mount Weather’s system. 

But the Grounders have always been a system of cogs and wires she’ll never understand. It’s people who will always remain unpredictable to her, leaving her inept at figuring them out. Regardless of how many boards she draws on, trying to see how they’re wired, she’ll never be able to know how they function, how they think, let alone what brings a Grounder to the mouth of the Sky People’s camp when her Commander had plunged her blade into their backs.

She wonders if this will have a happy ending.

There’s a long pause. She wishes she could see his face in an attempt to read him. When he speaks, his voice echoes around them as a firm command, “Open the gate.”

There’s hesitation. The gates don’t open automatically. She thinks to ask Bellamy what he’s doing, but she sees Octavia take a step toward him and hiss it in his ear. He doesn’t look at her. He looks at the gates.

Slowly, they peel themselves apart.

She thinks not.


	6. Bellamy II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _i'm not a hero._ or the one where the sky people realise there's still a knife in their backs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time sure does fly when you're busy! i'm hoping to update this again very soon, only because i missed a week. i'm still trying to figure out how i want this to unfold, since i've got a few ideas. i'm still trying to figure out the individual storylines of octavia and monty, but i have a feeling they'll come together soon once we step out of the set-up and into the thick of what i'd like to do. kane is super hard to write. who knew?
> 
> hopefully the chapters aren't too short/don't have little happening in them. anyway, hopefully the next one will come sooner rather than later!
> 
> unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thanks for reading (and commenting)! ♥

Surrounded by the Guard, Bellamy shoulders his way to the front. In the corridors of the Ark, they part like the sea for her — or out of fear, he doesn’t know. The Guard is a black mass invading the corridors, and so many people peer out of their own rooms, past the doors, to take a peek at the Grounder who dresses like a Grounder and doesn’t try to pretend she’s one of them.

He tries to stay near her. Her hands are held behind her back, shackled there with silver cuffs. She stands tall, as though she isn't being escorted by men and women with batons and guns, ready and almost eager to raise them toward her. 

Kane leads the pack to the interrogating chamber, the one he’d been locked in when he’d been arrested for trying to beat Murphy into a pulp.

He hadn’t missed it. The sun filters through too sharply and hotly. Dust particles dance in the air. There’s a long vine growing in the corner of the room, stretching itself along the wall. It’s been abandoned since that day Kane had found him. Bellamy isn’t surprised when he barks for a chair.

Once a lanky man with brown hair slides it across the room, Echo's forced to sit. Hands still cuffed, it's uncomfortably she rests her back against them. Even though her legs remain loose, he thinks the presence of guns and batons, and the fact she’s outnumbered, keeps her at bay. 

Echo isn't stupid. That’s how they underestimate her in this moment. Believing she's approached them out of sheer stupidity, coming alone, asking for _him_. It’s the smartest thing she’s done, humanising herself as an ally of Bellamy Blake, the man who had entered the mountain when no one else had the guts.

Or so that's what Octavia tells him. He thinks he’s pretty gutless at times.

Heracles is regarded as a hero, taking on the Twelve Labours as Atlas did the weight of the world, but Bellamy knows Heracles had been cunning. Letting Atlas do the work, he'd taken the glory and left little in his wake for the Titan who carries the heavy burden of knowing he had felt and tasted freedom, and had been stupid enough to trade it over for a golden apple.

Being compared to him, at times, is almost like a knife to the throat.

He can feel Octavia enter the room. Like a whirlwind, she almost knocks him over when she brushes roughly by him. Standing a little behind him, she touches his elbow, as if to inform him she’s here.

With him.

Bellamy doesn’t know why he ever thought she’d leave him to sit in a den with wolves.

Octavia sticks out like a sore thumb. With the Guard dressed in black, faces clean, save for those who have cuts on their cheeks and bruises on their jaws, Octavia’s dressed in a dirty black. Her face remains slightly stained with war paint, even though her eyes appear to be less clear and bright without the dark outline of it smeared over her features.

“She needs to leave,” Kane says, looking to Octavia before he nods toward Sergeant Miller. 

Sergeant Miller doesn’t have time to think about taking a step before Bellamy’s in front of his sister. Standing in front of her, as if to guard her from being taken from him again, he sees how Sergeant Miller hesitates, looking to Kane for guidance.

“No,” Bellamy says, loudly. “She stays. She knows the Grounder language better than anyone here.”

He can feel Octavia’s gaze settle on him. If he looks toward her, he knows she’ll be frowning in confusion. He’s always wanted her gone, far away from any of the interrogations they’ve had to do in order to save themselves.

There’d been one interrogation Bellamy wishes he could take back. But he knows Lincoln’s forgiven him for it. He suspects Lincoln’s done so because Bellamy can’t forgive himself.

When he looks at Octavia, her brows crease together slightly. It’s when he nods his head, a sign of respect, she seems to relax, the tense air around her dispersing just a little.

Kane shifts in the room, his footsteps loud, despite his boots sliding against the floor like they’re made of soft soles. It draws Bellamy’s attention back to him. He stands with his hands clasped in front of him, like he’s meant to be seen as _soft_.

Bellamy would describe Marcus Kane as anything but soft. His centre may be as gooey as Monty recalls marshmallows to be, but he’s as hard as the food they’ve collected and found to be stale.

Kane looks down at Echo. “Why are you here?”

Echo’s stare is unwavering. Bellamy finds his mimics hers, watching her as though he’s afraid she’ll shake the iron bars of her cage.

A part of him is. He doesn’t want her to sacrifice herself for him. 

She doesn’t even blink. Her gaze flickers to his, as though she’d been sensing it.

Bellamy doesn’t look away. But he knows Kane's looking at him.

“For help,” she says, to him more than Kane. After a moment, she looks toward him, tilting her head upward in defiance — or strength. Bellamy’s beginning to see that’s how the Grounders look at them. Like they’re worthy of inciting fear.

Kane takes a step forward. Echo only straightens her neck, staring up at him. Kane seems soft, approaching her like she’s a child, but Bellamy knows Echo isn’t a child to be coddled. Her hands ball into fists behind the chair, but she doesn’t react as he suspects a Grounder would.

“With what?” Kane asks, voice soft.

Echo’s gaze drops for a moment, a quick second before she’s looking up at Kane once more. 

Bellamy isn’t sure if she’s used to being met with little resistance. From what he’s witnessed of the Grounders under Lexa’s command, the ones who shadow her as though she’s a long and thick and unbreakable tree, they’re not used to kindness. They’re not used to someone wanting to hear them out.

Maybe this is what a peace treaty is. Without the knife in their backs Bellamy thinks everyone in the Ark can feel.

Kane opens his mouth to speak again, but doesn’t. Remaining quiet, he watches Echo, who drops her head for a moment as though her entire body has gone boneless.

“He’s dying,” she says. Lifting her head, she glances at him, then at Kane. Tilting her chin upward defiantly, she doesn’t let the waver in her voice break her resolve. Her expression remains blank, as hard as stone. Bellamy remembers how it had looked when she'd softened toward him. “We need your help.”

Kane crosses his arms against his chest. Something within his body language shifts. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks, softly.

Echo’s eyes seem to narrow. At Kane’s softness, at the lack of harshness in his tone, Bellamy wonders if Echo’s ever been met with a more welcoming voice. He’s heard the Grounders with their shouts and grunts, Lexa projecting her voice as loud as she can to be heard despite her small stature. 

“He isn’t well,” she says, looking down. Echo’s jaw clenches before she seems to come back to herself. Watching each stone rebuild itself, she becomes a blank slate for him to look upon again.

After a moment, Kane says, “You need medicine.”

Echo looks up at him, but doesn’t say a word.

Kane looks over at his people, his gaze sweeping over them. Bellamy thinks it lingers on him, but Kane’s looking back at Echo before he can even think to arch his brow. Octavia shifts beside him, arms crossed, her elbow sharp against his arm. 

No one speaks. The room remains quiet, smaller than it should be for the one space in the broken Ark that’s hardly ever occupied.

Kane takes a step forward toward Echo. She stiffens in the chair, back straightening again. Her boots press against the legs of her chair, as if she’s ready to launch herself at him. Kane’s gaze never lifts from her. Bellamy finds he watches Echo instead of Kane, waiting for the moment he needs to launch himself between them.

Kane asks, “How do we know this isn't a trick?”

"It's not,” she says. Echo’s eyes narrow. Glancing around at all of them, Bellamy thinks it’s the equivalent to her spitting at him. Instead of being locked in a cage, unable to even straighten his back, he finds that her acidic glare hurts a little more than her reluctance to thread the gaps of the mountain for him. 

Her voice becomes sharp when she says, “He’s _dying_. “ She looks pained. Instead of pleading with Kane, she looks at him. Bellamy feels her gaze pierce him like a warrior’s spear. 

With her expression pinched, she forces the words out of her throat, thick and tight, “A reaper cut off his hand.”

Kane glances over his shoulder toward a member of the Guard. Bellamy looks over, unsure of who holds his attention. Miller’s father stands there, his gaze shifting from Kane to Echo, a look of uncertainty on his face.

It’s the look all of them wear. Uncertain. There’s a knife in their back that’s been carved by Grounder hands, and he knows that they’re wondering if Echo intends to twist it and push it further into their bones.

He finds he takes a step forward. “She helped me,” Bellamy says. He looks to Kane, finding that he’s turned to him, brows raised. There’s no surprise to be found in his expression, though. For a brief moment, Bellamy wonders if he expected this outburst.

“If it wasn’t for Echo,” he says her name deliberately, wanting the others to see her as a person made of flesh and bone instead of a weapon, a being that launches herself at them from the darkness of the woods. “If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead. We never would’ve gotten our people out of the mountain.”

Kane looks at him, long and hard. He’s been avoiding his questions about the mountain. Walking away from him, shifting his glance, even changing the conversation, Bellamy’s ensured to never tell Kane what had occurred inside of the bunker. From the details of Maya assisting him to how Echo had held Lovejoy back for him to feel his life slip from his throat, Bellamy’s kept his cards close to the chest.

He’s beginning to wonder if that had been the wrong decision to make. If it’ll ruin their chances here, now, to form an ally. To maybe see if this is a trap extended from the Commander.

With a promise to return for her, Echo hadn’t remained. Bellamy thinks he understands it, even though he wants the Guard and Kane to leave so he can ask her why she never waited for him. 

But the answer has always been in plain sight. He’s not one of her people.

He doesn’t think much on Kane, turning his body to look at him, regarding him with a certain familiarity, like he’s always been aware Bellamy’s bene standing on the outskirts peering in. 

Looking to Echo, Bellamy gestures toward her with a nod of his head. Turning back to Kane, he can hear the conviction in his voice when he says, “I trust her. I trust her with my life.”

After a long moment of being unable to read Kane’s open expression, he looks at Echo, and finds she’s gazing back at him.

He almost misses Kane’s nod. He turns on his feet, glancing at Miller’s father. He cocks his head, seeing that this shatters the stone keeping the Guard in place. They come to life, standing taller, the men and women present coming to life before Marcus Kane as though they’ve looked into the eyes of Medusa.

Quietly, Kane says, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” It’s loud enough for everyone to hear, to have Octavia stiffen beside him.

Bellamy responds, loudly, “I do.”

With a nod, Kane turns on his feet. “Sergeant Miller,” he says, looking at Echo. “Select your five best men. You’ll be going to the Ice Nation camp.” 

Sergeant Miller nods, staying where he is. He looks to Echo, but Bellamy finds that his expression isn’t one of disdain.

“We’ll need Abby to go and assess,” Kane says, more to himself than to anyone else. He looks around the room, his eyes falling on Bellamy. With a nod, he says, “Bellamy, you go.” 

Bellamy stands taller, nodding. He doesn’t look at Echo, but feels her stare.

Kane looks to Octavia. He feels his sister stand taller, stiffer. Her walls build around her, and he thinks he can sense some of the stones erecting around him. “We’ll need you to translate,” Kane says. “Are you up for that?”

Octavia stands taller. She takes a moment before she answers, voice hard with conviction, “Yes.” 

Kane looks at Bellamy. “Tell Raven we’ll need radios. Just in case something happens.” He looks to Echo. “At the camp or at home. We must be in contact with one another.”

Bellamy nods.

Octavia bounces on the balls of her feet, appearing desperate the moment Kane looks away from them. “And Monty,” she says, words sounding rushed. Kane turns back around to look at her, eyebrow arched. “He’s from the Farm Station. He’ll be useful if there’s any food.”

Kane takes a moment to consider it before he nods. “Good thinking.” Kane takes a step away from Echo, who sits in the chair, expression blank. “We’ll leave before dusk. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can come home.”

*

Raven stays quiet for a long time. Regarding him with the arch of her brow and her mouth dropping open, she stares at him as though he’s grown two heads. He’s Cerberus, but he’s not protecting anyone. There’s no Hades to protect, no god of the dead to serve.

Avoiding Kane has been easy, even though Bellamy feels more like Icarus, flying a little too close to the sun with his wings made of wax.

Her workstation is the same as he remembers it. Dark and cramped, despite its space, with dust in the air, he sits on her cot while she leans against her workbench. Her fingers curl hard around the edges, but Bellamy doesn’t think he’s meant to notice.

Her eyes narrow, as though she’s trying to slot the pieces together. “You’re going to the Ice Nation camp,” she repeats.

“Yes,” he says, patiently.

He’s beginning to wonder if telling Raven about what had occurred in the room with Echo and Kane had been a mistake. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet, sitting still when he’s used to her moving about, sighing and clinking metal and tools. It’s her curiosity that had lead him here, a red string that had guided him from that room to her workstation, far away from Kane and Octavia, even though his sister isn’t so afraid of venturing into any room or corridor of the Ark.

Echo remains in the room, guarded. Despite wanting to talk to her privately, he knows there’s no chance he’ll get her alone without asking Kane. And asking Marcus Kane for a favour means he has to hand over the secrets he’s not ready to give anyone just yet.

Running her tongue along the back of her teeth, she nods her head. He wonders if the pieces she holds in her mind are clicking into place, or if the parts are too odd for her to slot together, requiring her to melt one or shatter a piece into dust.

“So,” she draws it out, brows creasing. “You’re going to the Ice Nation camp because some Grounder came to camp asking for you.”

“Yes.”

She looks at him, frowning. “You _do_ know how stupid that sounds, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any other word in your vocabulary?”

He thinks to repeat his answer again, but he shakes his head, curling his fingers into her blankets. “Raven,” he begins, trying to find the words that escape him. When he looks up, he finds her looking at him, an impatient jut to her hip. “She saved my life inside Mount Weather.”

Raven looks down, possibly at his feet. He doesn’t want her to ask how. He doesn’t want her to ask why. Those are the answers Octavia’s been trying to pry out of him for the last week. The answers keep floating to the surface, but Bellamy’s not ready to feel her knife slice into his skin to extract them. 

He wants to be the Nemean with unbreakable and unbeatable skin. Difficult to unbury his secrets. Octavia used to be able to peel back his skin and find them waiting there for her to pluck free.

“Okay,” she says, nodding. She leans back, struggling slightly to lift herself onto her stool. They’re a little too high for her, even though she won’t admit to it. With a wince, she rests her arm along her counter, ignoring how the leg in the brace seems to sit at an uncomfortable angle for her. “So, she saved your life. She’s trustworthy.”

“Yes,” he says, looking at her. Arms hanging over his knees, he nods his head. “She is. I trust her, Raven.”

She looks at him, licking her lips. She doesn’t speak for a long moment. “If you trust her, then I trust her,” she says, softly. “I’ll give you the radios, but I want you to check in with me.”

He inhales deeply, shifting backward on her cot, ready to argue with her. But the rebuttal doesn’t sit in his throat. He finds that he doesn’t have one to offer her, a fight for her to try and win against him.

“Please,” she says, softly. Her hand curls on the counter, as though she wants to scratch at the wooden surface. Her nails are too blunt to even leave a mark. “I need to be useful. I need to feel like I’m doing something other than dismantling things because that’s all I’m good for right now.”

He doesn’t need convincing. Truthfully, Bellamy would feel a little better, going out into the labyrinth of the ground beyond Camp Jaha’s walls, with Raven perched on his shoulder.

Bellamy nods. “Okay,” he says. 

Raven sits taller, back straighter on her stool. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Bellamy.”

He shakes his head, letting out a long breath. “I hope so, too, Raven.” Bowing his head, he brushes his hand through his hair.

“If there’s anyone who I would follow blindly, it’s you.” He looks up at her, finding her looking at him. She doesn’t shift her gaze away. “I’m not the only one, you know. They’re calling you a hero.”

He doesn’t know what to make of her tone. It sounds warm, her words, even though he thinks she’s looking at him like she expects him to be as sensitive as a bomb in her hands.

His back hunches as he looks away. “I’m not a hero,” he says, quietly.

All his life, he wanted to be Heracles. But Bellamy knows that heroism, _that_ kind of reputation, comes with a price. A mere mortal like him could never hope to reach the greatness of Heracles, a man of strength, of courage, even of questionable honour.

Raven shifts, her stool scraping along the floor. “You’re the only one who thinks so.” She stands, pushing herself off the workbench with her hand. She walks away from him, her leg dragging her pace into a slow crawl. “Which is probably why no one asks you for your opinion on anything.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Bite me.”

Glancing over her shoulder at him, she smiles. He finds he smiles, a little wider than her. The darkness of her workstation seems to seep away. “Love to. But I’ve got a few radios to charge up before sundown.”

Standing, Bellamy rolls his shoulders, feeling some weight on them shift and shatter onto the floor of her workstation. Bellamy doubts she minds. Raven’s always been good at putting together broken things.

At the other end of her workstation, she bends over, looking through one of her metal boxes. Lifting her head, she looks at him, her smile wider, making her workstation brighter than it had been moments ago.

“And if this Echo betrays you like Commander Bitch did, I’m going to kill her,” she says. Raven smiles, mirthlessly, but it’s enough to make him feel a little warm. “Blow them all up. You know they owe me a good explosion.”

It’s only later, when he leaves her hours after she begins charging the last radio, that he realises she had said _you_ instead of _us_.


	7. Monty II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _i don't know why i'm here._ or the one where monty picks up a knife and starts to carve his place in camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! unfortunately, life buried me with work getting busier, but in the interim, i was able to take a moment to sit down and practically outline a good portion of the story. if my outline remains honest, this is going to be a _long_ one! (or much longer than what i'm honestly used to pushing out.)
> 
> please note that the story _will_ have some sci fi elements, hopefully in a manner that's a little realistic in terms of the world of post-apocalyptic earth. i say this now because my outline has dictated it and maybe you'll see why i pointed it now when we go a little further in the story ... speaking of, it will have some things that are featured in season three, but primarily will stand on its own. i'm kind of using bits of what we find out about a.l.i.e. to help me solidify my idea, but, otherwise, i'm just following what i originally came up with in the time between season two's finale and season three's premiere. so, there may be some inconsistencies with season three there, but hopefully you can forgive me?
> 
> this chapter _does_ deal with blood/cauterisation/wounds, so if you're not into that, the latter half of this is not for you. i wasn't too keen to research it, lmao.
> 
> a big thank you to _geckoholic_ for the support and potatoes when i was going through a rough patch creatively and with this fic. ♥
> 
> as per usual, this is unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thank you _so much_ for reading and commenting! i hadn't expected anyone to really read this self-indulgent thing. ♥ the grounders of the ice nation belong to me as they are creations of my own imagination.

“Did you know fire walking helped purify the people who walked through it?”

Bellamy doesn’t answer. With the radio held up to his ear, his face hard and his own steps as heavy as a boulder smashing itself into the earth, Monty isn’t surprised by his silence.

What he’s surprised by is how he hates the silence of the woods. The crunch of their feet on the dry leaves, the softness of Abby Griffin and Kane talking, the crackle of Raven’s voice through the radio, Octavia remaining quiet beside him, the sounds of the five Guard breathing too heavily around them — Monty doesn’t like it.

So used to the quietness of the inside of Mount Weather, he supposes he has to reacclimatise himself to what had been home for him. The crickets, the rustling of the leaves, the laughter of camp.

There’s no camp. Monty supposes the moment it’d been roasted by Grounders, it’d stopped existing.

Looking to Bellamy, he waits for a reaction, an acknowledgement he’s been heard. Bellamy’s face remains hard, exasperated and anxious, and he doesn’t answer him. Monty doesn’t blame him. Bellamy has all the answers, even the ones Monty wants to know, but he doesn’t have the patience or the time to give them just yet.

It’s the snicker behind him that gets him.

Immediately, Monty tries to slow his strides. Bellamy’s fast, like fire swirling away from him, burning the ground beneath him as he continues to walk powerfully. It’s behind him, in his shadow, Monty can see how Bellamy brightens up the world around him. The woods are no longer a scary place filled with intimidating shadows. It’s much more open, brighter, and warmer.

But that may just be the sun on his back. The canopy above them is thin, letting the sunlight trickle in and burn his scalp.

Walking beside Octavia, he easily falls into step with her.

Her face is a little cleaner now. Hair still intricately braided, looking more like a bird’s nest up close than it does from afar, he likes how she seems to walk easily. Dressed in her Grounder gear, he looks down and notices how her boots are new. They’re a little dirty from use, but they’re nice. He thinks they complete her outfit a little better.

She looks to him with a smirk. “Are you impure, Monty?”

Monty looks at her and finds she’s staring straight ahead. If he follows her gaze, he knows it’ll be on her brother’s back. And her brother’s back is near the Chancellor and Kane, walking next to the Grounder who’s being escorted by Sergeant Miller and a man Monty used to call Philip.

His name’s Ryan, and Monty’s come to learn he’s really fascinated by the idea of ant farms.

“I’m just saying,” he says, looking to Octavia once more. “It’s meant to purify the soul, and bring good harvest.”

She shakes her head. He can hear how unimpressed she is by her low mumble, “We could use a good harvest.”

He looks at her, eyebrow arching slightly. “What do you mean?”

She shrugs with a sigh. “I just have a bad feeling about all of this.”

When Monty follows her gaze, it’s, unsurprisingly, on her brother’s back. The back of a man wearing a Guard jacket. Thick and black, frayed around the edges, a little worn and dusty, Monty thinks he understands.

It isn’t the situation with the Grounders she thinks of. It’s the Ark.

But Monty chooses not to address it. The moon may expose the land for what it truly looks like, bumpy and rough and sometimes not as pretty as it appears in the bright shine of the day, but Luna never reveals another’s secret. She only highlights it, pointing someone in the right direction by ensuring those who look upon her for guidance take note of her friends in the constellations.

He’s seen Octavia lie on the dry grass beneath the stars, right in the middle of the grounds in front of the Ark. Luna’s shown him what he needs to see. It’s Octavia who needs to tell him what he has to know.

If he’s meant to know. Monty kind of doubts he’ll ever learn what it is that has her shoulders heave and her entire aura shift into something desperately sad and lost.

“Raven won’t leave Bellamy alone,” he says, instead.

Octavia cracks a smile. “Not surprised.”

“I didn’t realise they were so close.”

She looks at him then, eyebrow arched. Shaking her head, she smiles, and looks ahead instead of at him. “She feels left out,” she says. Monty watches Octavia, the way her jaw clenches, her head bowing slightly to focus on the ground at her feet. She’s trying to pretend she’s as invincible as a Grounder, but Monty’s seen them fall to a bullet splitting open their own soft flesh. “I know what it feels like to be left out.”

When she looks up at him, he glances away, feeling his entire face flush with heat.

“Bellamy knows what it feels like to be the person who can include someone who feels that way,” she continues. “It doesn’t really bother him, you know. I think she knows he needs it, too.”

“The threats over the radio?” he asks, looking at her.

Octavia laughs softly, shaking her head. “No. Bell …” She sighs, her pace slowing almost to a halt. He follows her belatedly, wanting to keep in accurate step beside her. Looking up at him with her brows creased together, he leans closer, expecting her to share with him a secret observation. “Has he seemed different to you?”

That’s a loaded question. It’s one Monty doesn’t believe he has any authority on answering.

“I, uh — The Guard —”

She shakes her head again. “Something is wrong, Monty,” she says. He watches her look to Bellamy, radio by his mouth as he speaks into it. He thinks he can hear him speak to Raven, sighing again about the unevenness of the ground. “He’s hiding something from me. I don’t like it.”

Monty looks at her, unsure of what to say. Jasper hasn’t needed to hide anything from him. In plain view, Monty knows that his best friend hates him.

When he looks at Bellamy, he _sees_ Bellamy: Worn out, tall, aggressively loud and impossible to ignore, and safe.

He likes walking in his shadow for that very reason.

“It’ll be okay, Octavia,” he says. Looking to Bellamy, he tries to smile, tries to sound and be reassuring. He can hear Bellamy grunt over the radio again. “As long as he can describe the leaves, I think he’ll be fine.”

Octavia looks over toward Bellamy and laughs a little too loudly.

She bumps into him, and when he looks at her, he finds Octavia’s head is bowed, but she’s smiling. With her hair in messy braids, he’s found it’s much easier to see her face when it had been difficult to see her before.

Maybe it hadn’t been on accident she’d nudged him. He finds he’s smiling brightly, despite the dreary circumstances they find themselves in.

When she picks up the pace, he follows, discontent to be left behind by her. They’re close to Bellamy, but not on his heels, and he watches the way he holds himself. Shoulders back, steps easy — it’s like Bellamy had been born to take gigantic strides through the woods. 

He can hear Raven on the radio.

“— Tell me what the leaves look like again.”

“ _Raven_.”

He stays beside Octavia for the rest of the walk, finding himself finally in good spirits.

*

It feels like they’ve been walking for several long hours when it’s only been a couple. The Grounder speaks, he thinks — even though Octavia wants to be on the heels of Bellamy, they’ve lingered behind. He can barely hear the Grounder’s words, but he watches the profiles of Abby and Kane, the way Bellamy’s shoulders remain pulled back, as if he’s waiting to be attacked.

When they’re hovering near Abby and Kane, he finds Octavia pulls back. He wonders if it’s the Guard uniforms flanking the Grounder’s side that has her feeling repelled.

The party ahead of them stops. Sergeant Miller is a man with broad shoulders and the type of footstep people can feel reverberate through the earth. It doesn’t surprise him Ryan stops walking, and so does Cynthia, the lady officer bringing up the rear with Jeremy, stops, too.

When he looks ahead, he firstly sees nothing. Trees reaching up to the skies, trunks thick, the bushes even thicker. It looks like they’ve been walking in circles, truthfully, but when he tries to look further, he can see movement.

They’re standing on a slight hill. The slope below leads them to a camp, one Monty simultaneously wants to back away from and walk toward.

Feeling his feet begin to move, the left moving forward and the right backward, he chooses to fall back onto what brings him comfort.

“I think I’m wearing tennis shoes,” he says.

Octavia looks at him, eyebrow arching. “What?”

“My shoes,” he says, looking down. “They’ve lasted for so long. I must be wearing tennis shoes. Did you know a typical pair can last for five hundred miles of walking?”

When he looks up again, Octavia’s looking at him like he’s grown a second head.

He thinks to lift his hand to make sure he hasn’t.

Kane’s voice stops him from doing so.

“Ice Nation camp,” he says, looking back at them. He turns to face their small party, nodding to each and every one of them. Monty included. “We are to approach peacefully. No weapons. No violence. We’re here to help, and they’re accepting our help.”

His gaze seems to burn into him, or maybe Monty just wants to think that. He’s not the type of person Kane would ever notice. He’s not the type of person anyone would notice.

Ryan nudges the Grounder with a sharp brush of his hand. Bellamy stands a little ways away, peering down at the camp. It’s as though he senses the touch, turning to look at the Grounder, his brows creased so tight Monty wonders if his face will peel off like bark does to tree trunks.

Sergeant Miller stands on the opposite side of the Grounder. She’s turned around, looking at the Ark party with a neutral expression. Cynthia’s a short woman, tanned skin, bright eyes, and thick hair. Jeremy’s taller, bulkier, with blonde cropped hair and hands that are as thick as a tree trunk.

He thinks, despite Ryan’s interest in ant farms, Jeremy wouldn’t be able to take him in an arm wrestle. Ryan’s fingers are long and thin, his frame shorter and less bulkier, but the way he holds himself would intimidate a queen ant into giving him her army if he so much as desired it.

The Grounder doesn’t look away. Keeping her eyes straight ahead of her, he thinks she’s sizing them up. But maybe she’s just looking over his shoulder and toward Cynthia and Jeremy because there’s nothing interesting to focus on.

Kane looks to Bellamy, nodding toward him. “Bellamy,” he says, and Monty senses there’s a message hidden in the syllables of his name.

He takes a step forward, and Monty watches as Bellamy takes the place of Sergeant Miller and Ryan. Abby and Kane walk behind him, with Kane seemingly on their heels.

The Guard waits a few moments before following, staying a couple of steps behind them as they walk down the slight hill and into the Ice Nation camp.

When Monty looks around, he finds he’s looking for something. Tents. A fire. A large group of them ready to pounce. Peering up at the trees, he searches for an archer, but finds no one resting in the canopy. 

Despite his quick search, he finds nothing.

There’s horses, large and dark in colour, left alone to graze on the dry tufts of grass on the skirts outlining the small camp. The ground looks flat enough to be a hard mattress to sleep on, if Grounders even sleep. There’s a fire pit with thick logs, smoking. And when he lifts his gaze, he finds Grounders.

Staring back at him. 

Faces hard. Impenetrable. Monty finds himself stepping into Octavia, and knows she’s looking at him like he’s a wimp.

_I don’t know why I’m here_ , he wants to tell her, but finds his mouth is too dry to even support his voice travelling up his throat. Instead, he walks beside her, and stops when she stops.

There’s a line drawn along the camp ground. Monty can see that Bellamy’s stepped over it.

He listens to the Grounder in Bellamy’s hands address her men. “I’m fine,” she says.

In English. Monty finds that strange, her complying with Kane’s request she speak in English and only English.

“They’re here to help,” she says, her voice monotonous. It’s then Monty notices her hands are untied. She’d been walking with them without so much as a single restraint.

And Bellamy stands beside her, his hands by his sides, one brushing against the hilt of his sidearm.

It doesn’t make sense.

When he looks to Octavia, he finds her staring at the Grounder intently. And then it all clicks in. Octavia’s here to translate a language no one here understands. And he’s here to trip over everything and hopefully not be the person the Grounders see and try and hurt.

A man with thick shoulders, a broad nose, and bright blue eyes steps forward. His hair is thick and black, like Bellamy’s, but with ringlets.

He approaches slowly, looking hard at the Grounder standing beside Bellamy. He stops before them, looking her over, and Monty supposes it’s for wounds.

“ _Skaikru_ ,” he grunts. It sounds like a threat. If his voice wasn’t so low, he knows his gaze would be as sharp as a spear plunging into his best friend’s chest.

It hadn’t been him. This man seems too thick and big to be able to sit in a tree.

“They’re here to help Aderyn,” the Grounder woman says. Aderyn doesn’t seem convinced. Monty finds his heart beats rapidly in his chest, speeding up the moment his bright blue eyes pass him and settle on Octavia.

He sees Bellamy tense, like he just knows when someone looks at Octavia in a way he doesn’t like. Which, in hindsight, Monty has come to understand is in any which way. He finds himself taking a step closer toward Octavia.

And realises he’s standing slightly in front of her.

The Grounder beside Bellamy speaks again, her voice firmer, “Take me to him. Now.”

Aderyn looks at Octavia for a long time, then Kane, then, he supposes, his comrade, and then moves. He leads them across the small campsite and into the thick of the bushes on the opposite side of where they’d come from. Bellamy follows beside the woman Grounder, a step behind her as she walks across the site as though she’s leading a friend.

Up a slight slope again, they follow Aderyn’s thick back to a tree as broad as him a little ways away from the camp. A tree’s fallen close to its kin, still sitting rooted to the earth. It feels like a little gate they walk through, and he supposes it is, in a way.

Monty’s heart picks up. Looking around, the canopy is thick, the trees curving inward. He finds they look like people, branches thin and wiry, leaning in toward him, their faces almost screaming.

Looking back, he finds that on the other side of a tree is a woman. Stepping out from behind it, her expression matches Aderyn’s. Her fine features pinch in disinterest. 

She speaks, but Monty doesn’t understand her. 

“They’re here to help,” the Grounder beside Bellamy says again. “We can trust them.”

The woman looks skeptical, dark eyes taking them all in. Monty finds he wants to disappear, curl up into a ball, but stands tall, despite how he internally flinches away from her unblinking gaze.

Abby steps forward, hands raised slightly in the hope to ease her. Monty thinks this only confuses the woman instead.

“We heard someone was hurt,” Abby says. “I want to help. I _can_ help.”

The woman’s expression doesn’t shift. Her gaze does, though. Settling her eyes on Bellamy, she looks him up and down. “I remember you.”

“Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “You too.”

She eventually steps aside, walking back toward the tree. When Monty follows Bellamy and the Grounder, he steps to the side, almost into Octavia, and finds that he can see a body lying against it.

“Echo,” he can hear, whimpered from the person on the ground. 

She steps forward, away from Bellamy, and kneels before a man. Monty follows Octavia, feeling safer beside her. They walk around to the other side of the tree, watching as Abby approaches with Kane in tow, shadowing over her.

A man with sandy blonde hair hanging over his face, covered in blood around his neck and chest, cradles a stump of a hand. It’s bleeding. The sleeves of his dark Grounder jacket are stained a deep black, his skin pale in comparison to the bright green of his eyes.

Monty realises this man is crying. His face is wet. His eyes red, lips turning purple, he thinks to look away, but finds he can’t.

They crowd around him like they’re some protective unit. 

Echo reaches out to brush her fingers against his cheek. She murmurs words Monty can’t interpret. Kane looks up at Octavia, who Monty sees nods toward him. “She’s just telling them she’s there. Help’s here.”

Abby’s looking at Kane, and seems to wait until he nods. It’s weird, watching them like this. Monty feels like an outsider, pressing his palms to the glass panel and looking in. But he sees Abby’s gaze land on him for the briefest of moments before she kneels beside the man.

Pulling his stump toward his chest, he spits at Abby’s feet. Undeterred, she lowers herself, looking to Echo who follows her movements easily.

Raising her hand to brush it against his cheek, Echo murmurs something Octavia doesn’t catch.

“Bran,” Echo says warmly. Monty knows that tone. It’s the warm tone a mother uses on her child. 

She reaches out tentatively to touch his arm, the one where, at the end, there’s no hand, but a stump and hanging fleshy bits. He wants to look away, and finds that his eyes shift to the Grounder’s face. Bran flinches away from Echo’s touch, and Monty sees a tear streak his grimy face.

“Please,” she pleads quietly. “ _Abi_ will help.”

Bran looks to Abby, kneeling beside Echo, her hands on her thighs as she waits. Sizing her up, his face seems to break, cracking as another thick tear drops from the corner of his eye and to the ground beneath him.

After a long moment, Echo turns to Abby and nods. 

Shifting forward, he watches as Abby tentatively reaches out for his arm. Bran doesn’t move, keeping it cradled to his chest. Monty feels Octavia wrap her fingers around his elbow, pressing on tight around the bone. He doesn’t flinch, holding his breath.

Bran relents easily, letting Abby pull his arm away from his bloodied clothes. Looking at the wound, she inspects it closely, and Monty finds he has to look away.

He sees Bellamy, staring at Abby and Bran, his expression a little bewildered, maybe even overwhelmed. He doesn’t look like Bellamy, the leader who knows the answers to everything. The hard-ass Jasper used to complain about until he’d stopped speaking so coldly of _Bellamy the Bastard_ and had begun speaking warmly of as a friend is gone.

The radio in Bellamy’s hand is quiet. Gripping it tightly, Monty notes how Raven’s no longer online, either.

There’s movement, and Abby draws his attention back to her immediately. Looking over her shoulder, she glances at Kane, then turns back to face Echo after a moment. “It’s bad,” she says. “I need to act quickly. I don’t know how much blood he’s lost —” Her tone shifts, as though she’s pleading with Echo. Monty doubts she needs to. “He could die from blood loss.”

“When did this happen?” Kane asks patiently.

Abby speaks over him to Echo, her voice quiet, “I need a knife. You need to hold it over a fire and wait until the metal is red. I’m going to seal the wound as best I can.” Echo stands, and Abby reaches out to wrap her fingers around her arm. “Clean it first.”

Echo nods, then stands up, unbalanced, and pulls the other woman Grounder with her as she runs back to her camp.

The Guard watch the two women go, but Monty finds his eyes can’t stop looking from the blood staining Bran’s blonde hair.

“A day ago,” says Aderyn. Kane looks toward the Grounder standing beside him.

“How?”

Aderyn stares at the ground. He doesn’t lift his gaze to address Kane. “Reapers.”

Abby looks over her shoulder, and it’s after a moment Monty understands she’s speaking to him. “Find me a stick. Anything for him to bite down on.” She turns back to Bran, shaking her head. “We should’ve brought alcohol. I should’ve anticipated it’d be this bad.”

Monty stands there, rooted in place. Octavia nudges him, cocking her head to the side, and guides him away from the tree cradling Bran. He can hear Kane speak, reassuring Abby none of them could have known the wound would be this bad. 

He doesn’t realise they’re a few feet away from them when Octavia stops to squat, brushing leaves and thin twigs from the ground to search for a meaty stick.

“Do you think Echo didn’t tell them on purpose?” Monty finds himself asking. Remaining standing, he doesn’t look for a thick twig on the ground for Bran to bite down on.

“No,” she says. Octavia shakes her head, throwing a small rock against a tree. “She wouldn’t have put her life at risk to be purposefully misleading.”

“But she didn’t know she needed alcohol —”

Octavia picks a thick, short stick from the ground and stands. Looking at him, she tilts her head to the side, arching her brow. “Sometimes you don’t know what you need when you’re desperate, Monty.”

Holding the thick twig between her two palms, Octavia examines it. It’s short and stubby, half the size of her lower arm. Monty isn’t so sure if it’ll do, but it’s better than nothing at all.

It’s better than having a Grounder bite his own tongue off.

“Come on,” Octavia lowers her stick, cocking her head in the direction of the small party. “We should take this back.”

Monty reaches out for her, fingers wrapping around her arm. Looking down at where he touches her, he finds himself surprised that he’s even holding onto her.

Octavia seems to be as well, but he supposes he’s shocked she hasn’t pushed him away for grabbing her.

“Why am I here, Octavia?”

He finds himself afraid to look up at her.

Nothing about this makes sense. From the Grounder being unbound from their journey beginning at the Ark to this camp, to the Grounders easily accepting their help, to his very presence here. Monty Green isn’t an important player. It’s the one thing he’s known since before he hit the ground.

After a moment of silence, he does. Her expression is soft, almost pitiful, and Monty wishes he hadn’t so much as lifted his gaze at all.

“I wanted you here,” she says. “You’re useful.”

“How? I’m afraid of blood.”

The corner of her lip quirks upward. “So am I. It makes it easier to know someone else is, too.”

It’s not an answer, but he drops his hand. Letting his arm swing by his side, Octavia smiles softly at him before she turns and walks. The ground crunches beneath her feet, but it doesn’t so much as protest her weight.

He follows.

Echo’s returned with a white rag in her hand. Monty realises belatedly it’s the strip of fabric she would’ve been made to wear around her chest inside her cage in Mount Weather. It’s dirty and bloodied, grimy with sweat and mud. The woman beside her hands Abby the knife, fingers holding it daintily.

It’s a sight he’d never thought he’d see. A Grounder handing a knife to one of his own people as though it was made of glass.

Octavia steps forward, holding out the stick for Bran to take. “Here,” she says.

He looks at her, as if expecting the stick isn’t from his ground.

“Wrap it in the cloth,” Abby says. Looking to Echo, she nods toward the stick in Octavia’s hand. “Fold it. I want to make sure he has something thick to bite down on.”

“Bite,” Echo says. She reaches forward to take it, wrapping the rag around and around the stick until he’s forgotten it’d been a stick at all. She brings it to Bran’s mouth where he opens his lips and teeth to hold it.

Monty takes a step backward, Octavia following him a moment later. He looks over to see Bellamy standing beside Kane, his expression still frozen in what Monty believes mirrors his own.

“This will hurt a lot,” Abby begins, her words properly weighted. She breathes out, “This is the best I can do.” She holds the knife in her hand, the silver blade shining a bright sunset orange. She moves it toward him, then stops. “There’s no shame in screaming, Bran.”

Bran makes a noise, and Monty finds he has to turn away. 

He thinks of his feet. Wonders how many steps he’s taken today.

“Over one hundred,” Octavia replies quietly. He looks at her, brow arched, and she shrugs her shoulders. She’s turned around, too. “You just asked.”

It’s then he realises he’d been babbling softly, wanting to overpower his senses with his own voice and the facts he’d read in a book from Mount Weather.

The moment he acknowledges this, letting the silence drown within those few seconds, he hears Bran scream. Monty grips Octavia’s hand tightly and finds that, no matter how hard his fingers press into the backs of her hands, the sound doesn’t stop.


	8. Octavia II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _i'm not afraid._ or the one where octavia begins to realise fear is an incredibly powerful force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have to say, i really enjoy writing the grounders a lot — and especially how the clans aren't as neatly slotted together as one commander may like! i've been sitting on this one for a few days, only due to what occurs in it. nothing too exciting, but perhaps acknowledging a mere thread of someone's plot as things begin to unravel (or tie together?) for our _kru_.
> 
> aderyn, alis, and bran are mine. so is the alcohol poisoning anyone may suffer if you decide to take a drink for every greek mythology reference in this, haha.
> 
> as always, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. you'll find trigedasleng translations in the end note. thank you for reading and commenting! ♥

Eventually, the screaming subsides. The tremors in the earth remain.

Octavia thinks she can feel Bran’s shrieks and cries reverberate through her still. Holding herself, arms across her chest, and standing far away from the tree Abby still remains lingering at, Octavia looks out at the dead and bland camp the Ice Nation warriors have made for themselves.

If Indra was here, she’d tell her how unprotected it is.

There’s no fence, no guard at the supposed gate. They’re vulnerable for attack, if anyone cared enough to climb up the trees and sit on the branches with a bow and arrow at the ready. They walk around as though they’re unaware of the dangers that lurk in the woods.

Maybe they’ve forgotten. It’s a naive thought to have, one Indra would scold her for, but maybe they’ve simply forgotten they need to be afraid. Maybe they’ve forgotten how to be themselves, well protected and camouflaged. 

Or maybe they’re just like her. Elated to be free from the floorboard.

Besides, Octavia isn’t so sure if there’s anyone out there who is a threat anymore. Lincoln hasn’t been able to inform her of the intricacies of the clans.

Keeping her thoughts far from Room 302, she exhales and closes her eyes. Counting to ten, she tells herself _I’m not afraid._

“I’m not afraid,” she murmurs only moments later. But calls herself a liar not even a minute after.

Leaves crunch beneath the weight of feet. Octavia thinks she knows those footsteps from anywhere. She’d studied them from beneath a floorboard numerous times, and knows how they sound on the ground when approaching her tent. They used to bring her comfort, and they still do, even though she feels trepidation tighten her fingers on her upper arms.

With a hand brushing lightly against her back, Bellamy stands beside her. “Hey,” he says quietly, glancing at her. “Are you okay?”

She shrugs her shoulders. 

Not wanting to worry him, she thinks to lie. To say _I’m fine, Bell_ or even shove at his shoulder playfully, sending him backward and unable to analyse her expression before she’s able to hide the tension in her jaw and the wetness to her eyes. But he’s always been able to read her moods, see the cracks in her own facade she tries to build.

She may have worn a mask over her eyes for sixteen years, but Bellamy’s always been the one to see her.

Remaining quiet for too long of a moment, her answer is already palpable in the air. In his hands, she can see him turn it over, and so she finds herself afraid to look at him.

Wanting to nod her head, she shakes it instead. “I'm afraid, Bell.”

He takes a step closer toward her. She can feel his warmth as though he's the sun. But she’s not moronic enough to make a pair of wings out of wax. Even if she was, Bellamy wouldn't melt them and see her plummet to the ground beneath them.

Remaining quiet, she keeps her gaze straight ahead. The leaves move in the shadows. With the sun in its final stages of pulling the blanket of darkness over itself, the world around them is quiet.

She likes it that way, even though she finds it disconcerting within this moment.

Looking out of the corner of her eye, she notices the radio in his grip. He hasn't put it down. She isn’t even sure if he’s turned it off despite the silence on the other end.

She thinks to ask about Raven, but doesn’t. Maybe it's the very reason he hasn't asked her how Monty is.

“Talk to me, O.”

Octavia steels herself. Looking forward, she asks, quietly, “Why did that Grounder know who you were?”

Her heart thumps in her chest, a loud beat that echoes in her ears. She thinks she can feel it reverberate through the ground under her thick boots. She wonders if he can sense how afraid she is of his answer.

Bellamy shifts in her peripheral. She doesn’t need to glance at him to know he’s looking at the same point in the distance as her. Where she’s certain he’s hoping the shadows will swallow him whole, she wants them to transport her to Room 302. 

It takes a long while before he even speaks, and when he does, his voice is quiet and rough, “She was inside the mountain.”

“But she acted like she knew you,” she says. Keeping her gaze straight, she finds her foot begins to tap against the ground. Stilling herself, she releases her balled hands and flexes her fingers in an attempt to relax. “Why didn’t she flinch? Pull out a weapon?”

“Echo was there.”

Turning around to face him, she looks at his profile for the split second he allows her to. Like her mirror, he turns to face her as well. With his expression open for only a moment, Octavia thinks she sees something before he schools it. Building those blocks, he locks her out, and Octavia isn’t so sure if she’s found the answer as to why.

All she knows is Bellamy’s tired.

The thought sparks something viciously hot within her. Octavia balls her fists again, blunt and jagged nails pressing hard into the lifelines of her palms. She wants to shove at him, take a swing at his cheek to see his facade crumble. Her hands remain by her sides as she turns to look at him, brows furrowing deeply. 

Instead, she chooses to shove him with her words. She hisses, “Why are you so okay with this? You hate Grounders. You trusted Echo without even _thinking_.”

“It’s complicated,” he answers, sounding tired.

“ _Ugh!_ ” Crossing her arms against her chest, she childishly looks away from him. Frowning, she shakes her head, gritting her teeth as she determinedly refuses to glance at him even from the corner of her eye.

She can feel Bellamy looking at her. His gaze burns the side of her face as hot as Hephaestus’ fires. Flexing her fingers, releasing them to pull them back into her palm, she tries not to think on it. Tries to push it far from her mind, but it taunts her in the shadows like a bright ball of light. Like a star she’s unable to grasp or even study for long, compelled to move along a corridor she hasn’t had the time to memorise its patterns.

Turning to face him, Octavia knows her expression is open. Her lips pull downward as her hands ball into fists, fingers gripping the sleeves of her dirty jacket. “What happened to you in that mountain?”

Bellamy looks away. Her answer’s there, hidden somewhere in that movement. But Octavia’s always been one step behind him. Always in his shadow, trying to climb onto his back for a pony ride, she knows this isn’t a world he wants to take her. _Jungle or the forest, O?_

He takes a step away from her and keeps his gaze downward. He chooses somewhere in between. She settles on a desert that’s unwelcoming to a girl like her.

She thinks to behave as she had at ten years old and squat before him, looking up at him until his eyes eventually find her own. Where he had smiled, finding her amusing in her attempts to keep him occupied, always in his line of vision, she knows he’ll only frown.

She still wants to press her fingers to the corners of his mouth and pull the shape of it upward.

Quietly, she asks, “Why won’t you talk to me?” And finds that her voice cracks as though she’s splintering glass.

Glancing at her, she thinks she can see a shine to his eyes. Bellamy seems smaller now. Where he’d been as large as a titan, he’s now as tiny as a human.

Octavia thinks to stomp her feet against the ground to wake him up and see him grow taller once more, but she suspects he’ll only shrink.

Instead, she remains still. Looking at him, she watches as his face closes up. The stones return, building a tower around him and locking her out.

Her face falls.

Bellamy looks down, and she knows he’s seen her expression. It’s impossible not to. Even though it’s beginning to darken in their part of the woods, her disappointment and distress is as bright as the sun.

And she knows Bellamy never quite walks toward the sun. He isn’t a moth to a flame, even though she knows he often burns himself with the promise to protect her. She can hear it in the way he doesn’t look at her, in the manner of his still body. _I won’t let anything bad happen to you, O_. But she finds it’s at the expense of himself.

Sounding tired, he says, “I need to get back to Raven.” He shows her the radio, waving it in her face like she needs a reminder he’s holding it.

“Bellamy —”

He turns, remaining where he is with his back to her. Octavia stays still, looking at his shoulders, at the Guard jacket he wears. It isn’t a shield. It isn’t any sort of armour, like the Nemean Lion. It’s a weight she thinks he lets sink him. But Octavia’s seen him soar in it before, as though the fabric had been made of wax and feathers and constructed into the shape of wings. 

She wonders if he’d thought he was Heracles defeating the Nemean Lion, wearing the skin of what had haunted him for years to become invincible.

She doubts it’s worked. If anything, she’s noticed how it’s only weighed him down even more.

Waiting for him to walk away, she isn’t surprised he stays still and turns back on his feet to look at her. His nod is as small as his smile, but still comforting in its softness. “Lincoln will be okay, O.”

She feels her expression fall and shatter around her feet.

Taking a step forward, she reaches out to brush her hand against his arm. Letting it drop to her side, she balls her hands into fists. Feeling like a little girl again, she sounds it when she whispers, “I want _you_ to be okay."

“I will be,” he breathes out. She wonders if he’s trying to convince himself. Reaching out, he touches her shoulder, and even though it’s light, Octavia finds it grounding. “I’m going to go find Monty. I think he’s about to pass out.”

Octavia nods, reluctantly letting him leave. Her smile is small and soft, slightly bemused in how he can still joke, but once he turns to step out from the trees where she stands and back into the makeshift camp, her face falls.

Brushing her hair back behind her ear, Octavia lets out a breath. Her chest still feels heavy, like it’s been filled with stones, and though she’s brimming with the desire to lash out at a tree, hack her sword into it, even stomp on the ground like a child, she remains perfectly still.

So still, she hears the crunch of leaves again. But the footsteps sound different.

She isn’t surprised when she realises she’s traded one companion for another.

Turning, she steels her face, unimpressed in the pinch of her lips. “What do you want?”

Echo stands before her. Dressed in Grounder armour, shoulder pads broadening her shoulders, jacket slim and yet still as ugly as the dirt beneath their feet, Echo looks like her mirror. Save for the makeup smeared over her face, she looks like she belongs to Trikru.

Octavia doesn’t like it.

“What should I call you?” Echo asks, her voice soft. Her expression remains blank, gaze sharp on her. Octavia stands taller, knowing she’s being assessed. Put to some test, yet one less violent and obvious than Indra’s. “ _Okteivia kom Skaikru_ or _Okteivia kom Trikru_?”

“You know what to call me,” she says. The confidence she can hear in her voice lingers only in her vocal chords. Octavia’s never been afraid, but she finds she is right now. “ _Okteivia Bleik_ ,” she says, tilting her chin up.

“ _Bleikru_?” Echo arches her brow, tilting her head slightly.

Octavia feels like she’s laughing at her with her question.

“How do you know my brother?”

She watches as Echo looks over her shoulder in the direction Bellamy had wandered. She looks to him, sees his back as he sits down beside Monty on the border of the camp. The radio remains in his hand, but he doesn’t lift it to his lips or ear.

When she looks back at Echo, she finds the Grounder looking at her. Her stare is disrupted by her blinking, eyes roaming over her, unfamiliar gaze softening, but Octavia still finds herself unnerved. Echo almost looks at her like she’s a person instead of a potential enemy.

The way Indra first looked at her, she knows she had written her off as a victim of her own.

Crossing her arms against her chest, Octavia cocks her brow. _I’m not afraid._

After a long moment, Echo drops her gaze. She doesn’t take a step forward, but brushes the toe of her dirtied boot against the ground. The leaves crunch and shift, the dry ones crumpling after being disturbed. “Not my story to tell,” Echo says easily. Looking up at her, she notes, quietly, “You are Lincoln’s _gona_.”

“Yeah,” Octavia says. She stands taller, finding herself feeling proud. The defensiveness, the instinctual need to protect him, sparks her into feeling as though she’s a titan amongst mere mortals. Tilting her chin up, she stares Echo down. “I am.”

“I heard he’s a traitor now,” Echo says. Her voice remains quiet, conversational, and even though Octavia can feel her hackles rise, she observes her before she thinks to lash out. Echo looks at her like she’s trying to unnerve her, like she’s Poseidon trying to disrupt the calmness of the ocean.

Whatever she’s looking for, Octavia isn’t so sure she hasn’t found it.

Gritting her teeth, she finds she can’t relax. Her entire being begins to burn, flaming as though she’s the sun. “He isn’t a traitor,” Octavia almost spits out. 

Calmly, Echo says, “But he’s a Reaper.”

“Go _float_ yourself.”

Octavia turns away, giving Echo her profile to study. If she’s looking for a weakness, she’s found two of them. Her heart and her hands — the one thing that’s beating a little ways away from them now, sitting with a radio between his fingers, and the one that’s locked up in Room 302. 

Clenching her jaw, she warns, “Don’t speak of Lincoln to me.”

“Isn’t he?”

Octavia keeps herself as she is, looking at the trunk of a tree. She thinks she can see the bark peeling itself off of its spine, like it wants to abandon its home, believing it’s too weak or poor to guard. Octavia wonders if that’s what’s happening here, if Echo’s trying to shed her of her backbone.

“He’s getting better,” she says. 

She hears the crunch of leaves beneath Echo’s boot. She only takes one step. Octavia makes sure to count to avoid looking at her from the corner of her eye.

Echo takes her time before she speaks again. When she does, there’s something in her tone Octavia dislikes. “I ask because he isn’t.”

Octavia turns to look at her, brows furrowing together. “What?”

“You need to be careful,” she says. Echo’s arms remain hanging by her sides. Harper once told her if someone speaks to her without their arms crossed against their chest, they’re being open. Octavia doesn’t know if it’s something she read from a book, like Monty’s walking facts, or if it’s something she’d created for herself when she chose to make up stories about those who are no longer in camp.

“The Red Drug is dangerous,” she continues. Looking down, she tents her fingers together, as though she can picture the drug in her hands. Octavia doesn’t quite know what to think, looking down at her long fingers. Noticing how her knuckles are scraped and a scar mars the back of her left hand, Octavia finds herself surprised by the observation. “No one comes back from it.”

Looking up at her, Octavia shakes her head. “You’re wrong. Lincoln’s better. He came back from it.” She finds her words turn into a hiss, “He’s _Lincoln._ ”

“You need to be careful,” Echo repeats. Her expression becomes sincere, and Octavia finds she chants in her head _I’m not afraid._ “I can’t protect him all the time.”

Octavia’s eyes narrow. “What? Who?” Then, her tone sounds incredulous, “ _Lincoln_?”

Echo shakes her head. Glancing over her shoulder, she looks in the direction of Bellamy. Octavia follows the path of her gaze.

“Bell?”

“ _Belomi kom Skaikru_ ,” Echo says quietly. There’s something to her tone, a warmth and a practice around the syllables that make Octavia wonder how many times she’s uttered the name. “ _Lukot kom Azgeda._ ”

Octavia feels the wind knocked out of her.

_Friend of the Ice Nation._

Echo glances at her, opening her mouth to speak once more, but the sound of Aderyn calling for her sees her look back at camp. It’s brimming with a melancholic air, one Octavia finds is familiar. It’s the way their first camp had been when they’d had bodies to bury, people to remember, and names to recite over and over so they’d never forget. Aderyn carries Bran’s slack body in his arms, leading Abby and the Guard back to the centre of their temporary camp.

The screaming has stopped. Octavia hadn’t realised how quiet the woods happened to be without Bran’s verbal offerings to Zeus.

Without looking at her, Echo moves from the inside of the nest of trees into the open ground. Octavia follows after a few moments, emerging from the trees to see Bellamy stand and look at Echo. His gaze easily sweeps from the Grounder to her.

Walking down the slight slope, Octavia stops on the hard dirt ground. Bellamy comes to stand beside her.

“We need to talk,” she whispers, standing on the tips of her toes. She watches his Adam’s apple bob, his jaw clench, and while he doesn’t say anything, the rigidness of his body gives her her answer.

He’s heard her.

Looking away from Bellamy, she watches as Abby hovers near Aderyn. The female Grounder with the untrusting eyes and dark skin surveys her, looking her over like she hadn’t had the opportunity to do so before.

“You should come back with us,” Abby says. Looking to Echo, she holds the knife in her hands by her side. Octavia glances to it, noticing how the metal isn’t a hot orange any longer. “I need to keep an eye on the wound. Make sure it’s healing.”

“We’ll take care of it," Echo says, nodding. It's meant to be reassuring, but Octavia doubts Abby feels at ease.

“Are you in charge here?”

“Yes. These are my warriors.” Echo’s gaze glides over them and settles on Bellamy. Octavia notices how it softens, almost becoming warm. She wonders if the way this Grounder looks at her brother can thaw ice. “Because of you, we are able to return home.”

From the corner of her eye, Octavia sees Bellamy duck his head. He doesn't smile, isn’t as sheepish as she once remembers the gesture being whenever he did it on the Ark. Instead, the ground around him feels weighted.

“Queen Nia will hear of your kindness to Bran,” says the Grounder woman.

“Alis is a trusted ear,” Echo says, as though they need some sort of explanation. Octavia thinks she knows why she says it. Trust. Alliances. There’s a red piece of string that’s tucked somewhere in the ground, leading her through this confusing labyrinth of _Belomi_ and the Ice Nation, but she can’t find it beneath the dry leaves, regardless of how she toes the ground.

Glancing to the darker woman, features fine and pinched tight, she watches as she tilts her head up, as if she holds such a position in high esteem. Echo continues with a nod toward Alis, acknowledging her when she says, “Queen Nia will know _Skaikru_ is not a threat.”

“Thank you,” Kane says, almost bowing his head. Octavia looks at him as though snakes sprout from his unruly hair. “Azgeda will be known as an ally to Camp Jaha.”

“I’d still like it if you came back with us,” Abby steps forward. Alis stands taller, shoulders pulled back. She's a striking woman with dark eyes, thick hair, a tall statuesque frame. She seems as tall as Octavia remembers Wells Jaha to be. 

She isn’t as warm, though. Octavia can see it in the tension of her stance, the width of her legs as she stands ready to pounce like a panther.

Glancing at Bran in Aderyn's arms, Abby continues, “I want to make sure it’s healing.”

Aderyn begins to gently place Bran onto the ground. Moving towards them, Alis removes her thick jacket, fur sprouting along the collar of it, and folds it quickly and neatly. Stepping toward where Aderyn wishes to lie Bran down, Alis places her jacket on the ground before Aderyn lowers him. Ensuring his head is cushioned by the jacket, he slides his hands out from under him, and stands.

Looking to Kane, Abby doesn't quieten her voice when she says, “Maybe we should consider the mountain. It has supplies. I want to make sure it's healing.”

Kane nods. “That would be a good idea.” Looking out of the corner of his eye, he watches the Grounders. Alis seems to tense, standing in front of Bran like she needs to protect him, while Echo glances toward Bellamy, eyes on his radio in his hand.

Octavia looks down at the radio, wishing it would crackle to life. Hearing Raven on the other end had been calming for her during the silent breaths in her conversations with Monty.

Echo looks back at Kane, who asks, “Will you be moving from here?” 

“We want to,” Echo says. “It isn’t safe for us out here. We’ve lingered much longer than we should’ve when we lost Bran.”

Octavia thinks it’s too much information. Indra never would had revealed such a weakness, even though it’d only been temporary. Losing Bran means they’re fumbling, directionless as they walk in the woods Octavia doubts Echo has memorised. If she’d been locked in the mountain for as long as Monty and Jasper, she supposes she’s just as new to walking as they’d been when they’d crashed onto Earth.

“ _Ripa_ ,” Aderyn murmurs, voice low and gravelly.

“Stay,” Abby says, hands clasped together in front of her. 

There’s a sound of a shifting foot amongst the leaves on the ground, and Octavia glances at Monty, noticing how he hasn’t moved from his place on the log. Maybe he’s too afraid to, wanting to remain out of sight, out of mind, keeping himself as low as possible as he slips under the radar. 

“Please. Just for another day. We’ll go to Mount Weather and get some supplies — We can share what we find with you,” Abby pleads, turning to face Echo with earnest. Octavia swears she sees Echo take the tiniest of steps back, as if afraid.

Heracles afraid of Ladon. Bellamy once told her it was feasible, the greatest hero he’s ever recited the tale of to her being capable of _fear_. Fear is a demon that crawls inside of you, and Octavia has gone to great lengths to exorcise herself of such demons.

Alis spits on the ground, startling Abby and Kane. Monty leaps to his feet, glancing toward her with a wide-eyed expression.

“Alis,” Echo hisses.

“ _Skaikru_ ,” Alis glares at Echo. Her eyes travel over them, as sharp as a scythe trying to cut flesh from bone. Octavia stands taller, refusing to look anywhere else when Alis’ eyes land on her. “ _Ripa. Trikru —_ ”

“ _Shof op!_ ” Aderyn bellows. Now, Octavia believes the trees have shaken in fear. 

“They’re not the enemy, Alis,” Echo says. Her eyes sweep over them, the Guard, Abby and Kane, even herself and Monty. They linger longer on Bellamy, and Octavia isn’t so sure of how to read the softness of her gaze and words. “They are a friend. Trust in that, please. Bran would be saying the same if he was awake.”

Abby opens her mouth, as if she’s about to say something, but Octavia can see she realises she’ll be unheard. Where she’s able to command a room with a simple reprimand, she’s out of her depth here in the woods.

Alis spits on the ground again, drawing Echo’s attention back to her. “ _Leksa kom Trikru_ , Echo! The girl was uttering her name. Coming from the mountain!”

Bellamy frowns. His voice sounds rough when he asks, “What girl?”

Aderyn appears annoyed. Thick brows creasing together, he looks at Bellamy, then Echo. “A blonde girl.”

Looking up at Bellamy, Octavia notices how his brows crease together. His expression isn’t one that’s confused, not like how Monty’s gaping like a fish trying to walk on land. The furrow to his brow is one of understanding.

Echo turns to face him, elaborating, “A blonde girl came through our camp. She mistook another for being —”

Alis spits on the ground again. “Wore boots just like yours!” She points toward Octavia’s. 

Shifting her feet on the ground, her feet burn as everyone seems to stare at her boots. New, yet still dirty, the boots between herself and the Grounders are different. Hers are thick, enduring, while theirs seems to be in tatters, repaired by threads and others bits of leather. The only similarity she can see are the leaves sticking to the heels of her boots. Octavia looks down at them and then back up at Alis.

It’s a stupid accusation to make. Sneering, Octavia spits, “Go flo —” 

Her brother’s hand darts out to wrap his fingers around her elbow.

Bellamy tenses beside her. His voice is loud enough to boom like a clap of thunder, “What do you mean, she was asking for Lexa?”

“She had to make it right,” Echo says. With the way she says it, almost committed to relaying a message she’d been given via raven, Octavia finds Echo isn’t so surprised by this. She doesn’t seem confused, and that’s what begins to crawl beneath Octavia’s skin, causing her to frown. 

Echo doesn’t look away from Bellamy when she continues, “She had to find Lexa.”

Alis makes a move to spit again, perhaps finding a more satisfying target than the ground, but Aderyn, in two long strides, grabs at her arm to whip her around. The look on his face is menacing, reminding Octavia of the first time she saw lightning flash in the sky.

Kane steps toward Abby, his hand lifting as if he wishes to touch her arm. Octavia isn’t sure how to read the woman’s expression. Kane asks, “Where did she go?”

Alis raises her arm and points to Octavia’s left.

The direction of Polis. Octavia knows that’s where Heda resides on her throne the twelve clans have built for her. A commander of the greatest respect, turning her back on her allies in fear.

Octavia thinks there’s a demon inside of Lexa, stretching across the land she’d walked upon. It’d clutched at Clarke, turning her into someone who was directionless, the desperate girl in the tunnels ready to shoot down a damn door and have it reverberate throughout the mountain. She can see it now, the shadow of it emerge from the lip of their camp, stomping its way right to them. Passing by her and Bellamy, it seems to walk straight for Abby Griffin.

Abby’s hand claps against her collarbone. Bending in half, Octavia worries she’s about to collapse. Her expression falls, crumbling immediately once the realisation hits her. Kane steps forward, arms wrapping around her. And Octavia finds that her own heart breaks, despite the hardness that’s begun to dry around it, when Abby utters a broken, “Clarke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
>  _Okteivia Bleik_ : Octavia Blake.
> 
>  _Bleikru_ : Blake crew.
> 
>  _gona_ : Warrior.
> 
>  _Belomi kom Skaikru_ : Bellamy of the Sky Crew.
> 
>  _Lukot kom Azgeda_ : Friend of the Ice Nation.
> 
>  _Ripa_ : Reaper.
> 
>  _Shof op_ : Shut up.


	9. Raven III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _i don’t want kyle wick. i want you, raven._ or the one where raven reyes is picked first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the character of sophie belongs to me. i'm currently considering trying to put together a cast list of the ocs featured in this fic for the sake of making imagining them a little easier and as a reference, so stay tuned if i can manage to pull that together. also, i really enjoyed writing a character for this chapter, but i won't say who as they're a surprise. c: 
> 
> as always, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thanks so much for reading. i hope you enjoy! ♥

Rest is meant to make her feel better. Monty had gone on and on and _on_ about it over the radio before the clock had struck four in the morning. After he’d been pushed off of it by the gruff voice of Bellamy, deep and authoritative and calming in its own way, she hasn't been able to sleep since.

Closing her eyes, she finds herself drifting _now._ Now, of all times. With Sinclair seated across from where she leans against the wall, she needs to remain focused.

The Council Room is dark and dreary, reminding her of how the Ark had functioned when it’d been floating uselessly around in space. The long table in the middle is bare, save for a long map laid out in the centre. Coins outline it, keeping it as flat as a folded and used up piece of paper can be.

She wishes she had a coin right now, flicking it up with her thumb into the air to see if gravity really works. What goes up must come down. But the dodecagonal fifty cent piece with a kangaroo and emu etched onto it sits on the right hand corner of the map, weighing it down.

What goes up must come down. And so her mood follows.

“The Chancellor wants us to go to Mount Weather for supplies,” Sinclair says. He sits back in his chair, arms folded against his chest. Raven reads he doesn’t think this is a good idea.

Minutes later, he voices that thought.

Remaining sullen, Raven looks down at her nails. They’re short and dirty, chipped around the edges. Her fingertips are stained with the dirty dust coating her workstation. No matter how hard she tries to clean it, there's something that lingers that leads to staining her.

“Our team is out with that Grounder,” Sophie says. A tall woman with dark, curly hair, she stands at the edge of the room, but commands it so easily. Like the rising sun peeping over the tops of the mountains, she’s like a beam of light. No matter how quiet and soft she makes her voice, she always draws attention to herself. 

Raven looks up at her, easily watching her pace slowly. With her arms crossed over her chest, Sophie lifts one, pressing her elbow into her wrist to brush her fingers against her lips. She reminds her of something delicate, a slab of glass Raven would be afraid to take between her hands as she’s inclined to break such fragile things. Sophie’s voice is like the tinkling of bells when she speaks quietly, “We have to wait for them to come back.”

“Our Chancellor is out there with that Grounder,” Jackson says. Dressed in his medical uniform, Raven wonders if he owns anything else. Without the scrubs, the extra layer of a jacket with the sleeves cut at the shoulder, he looks a little out of his element. She’s sure he hasn’t been out of Abby’s shadow in an age. He stands by the edge of the table, fingers brushing over the corner of it. Raven likes that he's finally stopped tapping it in impatience. “We can’t make a move without her returning.”

“And in the meantime we just sit on our asses and wait,” Raven sighs. Leaning against the wall, she moves herself up against it, feeling it bite at her shoulders. Her shirt is thin, slightly torn at the hem. Stained with grease, she looks the part of a mechanic who doesn’t wear a brace around her leg.

Active. That’s what she looks like. A healthy, active mechanic.

Ignoring the ache in her leg, she tries to hide her wince. Sitting would be easier than standing, but Raven doesn’t wish for the shadows and the titles these three wear to push her into the shadows. She’s only just stepped out of them with Sinclair’s invitation to follow him into this room.

Sophie Martin unfolds her arms and looks at her, expression not unkind. Her eyes are as bright as her daughter’s, deceptively warm as she takes her in. “We’re not doing nothing, Raven,” she says, patiently. “We wait for the team to return and then we go to Mount Weather.”

“It feels like we’re sitting around and waiting,” she says. “We could be doing something _now_. Maybe preparing a new team —”

Jackson flattens his hand on the table as he speaks, “Abby specifically said —”

“Screw what Abby said.” She can almost hear her voice echo within the small chamber and does her best not to wince at how it reverberates too sharply around her. Like a gunshot inside a metal contraption. “Our people are out there, and we’re here, sitting around and doing nothing. We’re collecting supplies for a _Grounder._ ”

“We’re still in an alliance with them,” Sophie sighs. “We need to keep it. For peace.”

“Pfft, peace.” Raven presses her hands flat against the wall, using that to hold her up. If she can press pain into her wrists, then maybe it’ll alleviate the sharpness at her hip.

“Raven,” Sinclair’s reprimand is loud. She looks at him, and finds she holds his gaze. “Stop,” he says, gently. “We need to go into the mountain, anyway.”

Remaining quiet, Raven thinks she gets the last word in with a roll of her eyes.

“In the meantime,” he continues, remaining seated. Leaning forward, he presses his hands against the table. “We’ll need to prepare for it. Save us some time in gathering an inventory of what we have and what we need.”

“I can do one for Medica,” Jackson says. Sinclair nods, agreeing. Raven wonders if he lives there, but bites her tongue and stifles her comment immediately.

Sophie stands where she is, pressing her fingers against her chin for a moment. She always looks as though she’s deep in thought. “I’ll go through what food we have. Make a list of it.”

“Good,” Sinclair says. 

He turns to look at her, and Raven finds she stands taller against the wall. The movement elicits a sharp sting to course up her leg and settle around her hip, holding the bone beneath its palm.

Defensively, “Don’t look at me.”

Sinclair only smiles. “Can you make the radio better? You said it yourself, they sounded distant when they shouldn’t have.”

The sound had been shit when Bellamy had been inside of Mount Weather, but she’d thought, in hindsight, it was due to those assholes interfering with their channel.

Raven shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe.” After a moment, she puffs out her chest, and corrects herself, “Yeah, yeah, I can.”

“We’ll need test the ones we have when we go to the mountain. See if it’s a signal jamming, or if we need to consider trading in the old for something new.” She nods, thinking that makes sense. Feeling calmer, she balls her hands into fists and feels that pain settle at her hip more acutely now. “And you’ll see if they have any equipment that may be of use to you.”

Nodding again, it takes her a moment to understand what he’s said.

Once she does, she frowns deeply.

Raven feels something inside of her surge. Looking at Jackson and Sophie, she finds that they’re looking at her. Their expressions aren’t one of surprise, though. It’s like they expected it. It’s like they’re not even shocked by Sinclair's proposal at all. 

“Me?” She hates how surprised she sounds. She can’t shake it, though. The pain in her hip is most sharp when she’s standing still, and she can feel it flare in the bone right now. Feeling it begin to stretch, she knows it wants to crawl its way up her chest to her heart. “Why not send Wick?”

It’s the first name she can think of. It spills from her lips so quickly she leaves herself no time to flinch.

“He’s an engineer,” Sinclair says, patiently. He looks at her with a quirk to his lips, like he’s amused.

It only makes Raven’s hackles rise higher.

Blinking at him, Raven glances toward Jackson and Sophie, expecting them to be her pillars. When she stretches out her arms, she finds that they’re not there to help her fly away from what Sinclair proposes, from what he offers in his open palm.

It’s the one thing she's been scared to have, to even hold in her own hands. Ever since her surgery, she’s dropped it, letting it shatter to the ground beneath her feet. For good measure, she’d walked over it, stomping on it with her good leg and dragging her ruined one across it.

Hope. The tattered remains of her hope seem to have rekindled in his hands.

So, she chooses for a cheap shot against herself. She exclaims, “But he can _walk._ ”

Sinclair’s expression doesn’t shift. He doesn’t even stand, remaining seated, on a lower level to her. She looks down at him while he gazes up. “You don’t use your feet to test equipment, Reyes,” he says, patiently. “You should know that.”

“Send someone else! I’m better use here —”

Sinclair shakes his head, expression patient. He doesn't speak immediately, and she finds that the silence is what wraps itself around her, causing her heart to hammer in her chest, the panic to shoot through her much more acutely than the strain of her weight on her leg and hip. 

His hands are in his lap, under the table. She can imagine them tenting underneath it, ever so patient with her. “I don’t want Kyle Wick. I want you, Raven.”

Feeling the wind knocked out of her, she slouches against the wall. Moving toward the nearest chair, the one opposite him, she pulls it out, uncaring for how loud it is as it screams against the floor, and drops herself into it.

When she glances up, Sinclair’s looking at her. It’s with a familiar expression he studies her with.

It’s challenging in its own way. It’s loud in a manner that she feels hits too close to home. Where he had once been difficult to get a read on, she opens him like a book with large, bold text scrawled along its pages.

His expression is as smug as hers had been when she’d been at her most confident. But on his lips, it's softer and warmer, and at its most confronting.

For the rest of the meeting, Raven tunes them all out.

*

Sitting at the corner of her workbench, Raven tries to shield her eyes from the sunlight filtering in. The afternoons are hot in her workstation, and though she's opened all the windows she can manage to reach, she still finds sweat trickles at the back of her neck.

If Jackson hadn't taken her only working fan, maybe she wouldn’t find the tweezers in her hand slip between her fingers.

Rolling her eyes, she tightens her grip on them, and pulls the radio closer to her until her nose is touching it.

It’s impossible to shift wires around when her hands can barely hold a simple pair of tweezers in their grip. It’s all she has. The tools she needs are buried in boxes piled high in the corner of her workstation. 

She regrets snapping at Wick whenever he suggested he unpack the boxes she’d made him stack high when Bellamy had been in that mountain. Those tools were useless to her when all she needed was a couple of bright markers and a clean path to her transparent board and a working radio. Now, with Bellamy out of the mountain and no brainstorming in sight, she needs those damn tools like she needs her brace.

Sitting up straighter, she rolls her neck. Hearing a creak behind her, she peers over her shoulder, expecting Wick to walk through her door. There's a doorstopper there, sitting beside the doorframe. She’d forgotten to slip it beneath the door after Miller had cut it for her.

Debating pushing herself onto her feet and hobbling over toward it, she hears a crackle on her radio.

“Raven.”

Reaching over her workbench, she plucks the radio from where she lets it sit, charging. The wire pulls, straightening, and she tears it out of the radio’s side, uncaring of where it happens to fall in the clutter of her floor. 

It’s a pathetic thing, square in the mouthpiece and a long and thick cord winding its way in a long ringlet to where she’s plugged it into her power source. She hates this radio, and knows Bellamy does, too. Too small for his rough and strong hands, and too archaic for someone who could design the most perfect and beautiful piece of machinery in her sleep for her.

“Raven.”

Bellamy’s voice is deep and gruff, and though it’s rough and crackly, she finds that it warms her to hear him after hours of silence.

Gripping the radio, she presses the button, and hears the static on his end disappear. “Bellamy,” she says, shifting on her stool. She tries to move it closer to her bench, but gives up immediately, knowing she can't hook her leg around it without summoning a sharp pain through her other hip. Her good knee bumps against the leg of her workbench. She hates how she takes a moment to memorise the sensation. “What’s cooking?”

She thinks she can hear his eyes roll.

“Listen, we’re coming back." He sounds breathless, or like he’s walking. She wouldn’t doubt he’s pacing, Kane watching him as he speaks to her. Sometimes she wonders if he’s simply afraid of speaking to her, asking her to do fifty star jumps per his request and for the greater good of the camp with that shadow looming over him. “E.T.A. an hour or two.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“You’re going to need to change the channel,” he says. 

So, he’s nowhere near Kane. They haven’t developed their own language, a series of codes for one another to be able to communicate over this piece of shit technology. But she thinks she knows Bellamy’s habits by now after engaging with him for several hours over the damn radio.

The leaves have a round shape to them, a sharp tip if they haven’t been chewed on. Some are green, others are brown, and some are bright yellow, like the sun when it’s rising and setting.

She wonders which ones he’s looking at now.

She pauses for a moment, the uncertainty stretching out her response, “Why?”

“I’m giving Echo my radio.”

Her heart stops working, just like her leg. She always thought that would be the first piece of her to go. It had been, in theory, but it still beats away in her chest, reminding her it’s there one loud pounding at a time.

Sitting up straighter, she frowns. “ _Why?_ ”

She can hear him sigh. Beginning to count, she opts to give him until ten ‘Bellamy Blake is an idiot’ before she demands he answer her again. She gets to four before he presses the radio, it crackling in her workstation. “Something isn’t right. I need to stay in touch.”

“She can't just send a pigeon?”

“No,” he says. “Just a raven.”

“Ha ha.” Rolling her eyes, she leans forward, elbow on her workbench. “You want her to take one of our _only_ portable radios?” she asks, talking to him as though he’s stupid.

And he is. He’s just proven that he is.

“It won’t be one of our only radios,” he says, almost too calmly for her to not feel her hackles soothe. His voice has always succeeded in that, calming her when she finds herself riled. She hadn't realised that until now. “You’re going to find us more.”

“Bellamy …”

She can hear the amused smile in his voice, “What’s wrong?”

Raven pauses. What she’s about to tell him, she knows he already knows. Kane’s taken his little Bellamy toy and shoved it delicately into his pocket. He’s there now, in Kane’s good books, the hero this man needs in order to push his own agenda.

But Bellamy’s never been a character in a story for her.

Staring at her transparent board, she sees the numbers, the poor drawing of a tunnel in the bottom right hand corner in vibrant pink marker. “They want to go to the mountain,” she says.

“Yeah, I know. We need supplies.”

She sighs. Looking at her wall, she weighs her words before she stresses, “They want _me_ to go to the mountain.”

He’s silent on his end.

Quietly, she admits, “I’m going to be a liability.”

The crackle fills her workstation quickly. It seems louder than before. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.” She sighs, leaning her other elbow on the bench. She bows her head, palming her forehead. “Did you do this?”

“Do what?"

She sounds annoyed when she bites out, “Tell them to take me?”

“No. It was Abby’s idea.”

Shaking her head, Raven presses her palm to her temple. Keeping herself bowed like that, she feels the workbench dig into her elbow uncomfortably. “This isn't going to work.” It’s then she wishes she had covered her mouth so he wouldn't be able to hear her.

“Since when do you give up?”

Lifting her head, she frowns. “I’m not —”

“I’m going to be there,” he says. “And I don't know which wire to cut. I don’t know what shit we need. I don’t know what you can use or what you’d want to try and use. And I can’t describe this crap over the radio so you can figure it out. _You_ do. We need you, Raven.”

Closing her eyes, Raven lets her head drop, temple pressing more firmly into her open palm. She can hear the crackle of his radio, the sounds of the woods around him. She thinks she can hear Monty laugh, Octavia speak a little too crisply.

Or maybe that’s just her imagination.

The radios are shit. There’s only one channel they can use that crackles less than the other. She knows Sinclair can easily hear this conversation if he so happens to press his radio on. The sound is too unclear for her to find it satisfactory, and she knows that he knows that. Instead of wielding it against her like some sort of sword, he lets her hit herself in the head with the butt of her own gun.

It knocks sense into her, this way. 

“Be careful, shooter,” she says once she clicks her radio back on. “Get Ryan to finally turn his fucking radio on.”

“It’s shit.”

“I know. It’s why I gave it to him.”

She thinks she can hear him laugh.

The door to her workstation opens. Twisting on her stool, she finds Gina quietly sneaking in, closing the creaking and heavy door with a soft tap.

“I have to go,” she says. Looking back at the bench and her board, she tries to picture him out in the woods. Standing underneath a tree, the leaves almost brushing the top of his head. She thinks he’d look so tall out there. “Don't be stupid.”

“Can't help it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She waits for him to turn his radio off. Once her workstation is wrapped in dead silence, she drops her radio, letting it skid on the bench, and turns herself clumsily on her stool. Gina walks tentatively into her workstation, lifting her hand in a quiet hello.

“Raven Reyes, as I live and breathe,” she says with a smile. Dressed in jeans that hug her hips, her pink blouse hangs out from the waistband and slightly off her shoulder. Raven’s always liked her thick, curly hair. It frames her face delicately, even though Gina’s smile is hardly innocent.

She finds her mouth mirrors the curve of Gina’s. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I like your company,” she shrugs. Glancing around her workstation, Raven senses Gina’s approval. With a small nod of her head, her eyes take it in — the transparent boards with squiggles on them, the boxes, the cot, the clothes scattered everywhere.

Gina doesn’t speak, but it’s loud enough of a response for Raven.

She’s looking for something. A drawing on her board, a _name_ — she isn’t so sure why she thinks that, expecting Gina to wonder why _Bellamy_ has been written in capitals on her mess of a transparent think-board.

The only person who notices is Octavia, and that’s because she'd been born with a Bellamy radar built inside of her. It’s that thing that goes _thump, thump, thump_ inside her chest.

Resting her hands on her thighs, she can only feel one. Ignoring it, she sighs, and purses her lips as she watches Gina glance around. “Your mom told you, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” she says. Gina looks at her, giving her a shrug, as if that's to explain everything. Raven finds it does. “Came into the bar, wanted to do a stock inventory. Mom isn’t subtle.”

“Must be a genetic thing.”

Gina rolls her eyes. Watching her, she looks around again, as though she hasn’t seen the workstation in all its messy glory. It’s not like a bar with several bottles lined up along the shelves behind her. It’s just a clutter of Raven’s thoughts, of the things she likes and needs and wants to build.

Feeling vulnerable, like she’s on display as a bottle of saved liquor on the bar’s shelf, Raven glances around in a bid not to watch her friend’s expression. She’s only ever made it to the front door before escorting Raven to the bar for a few drinks and a nice meal.

Watching her gaze, Gina eventually settles on focusing on her arm. Or close to it. Looking to her side, Raven swivels, glancing over her shoulder to see what she focuses on. The radio. 

Crossing her arms against her chest, she nods toward the radio. “Was that Bellamy Blake?”

Turning to face her, Raven leans back as best she can, elbows on the edge of the workbench. “Yeah,” Raven smiles, then rolls her eyes. “Keeps badgering me on the radio. He’s _obsessed_ with me.”

“I don't blame him.” Gina arches her brow when she looks at her, and Raven does her best to keep her gaze. 

When she doesn’t offer to speak, Raven thinks to nudge her. A little too ungently, given she’s not quite used to this. Even though she’s seen Gina pry information, secrets from those a little too tipsy to think to shield themselves, she doesn’t have her gentle touch.

“Why?” Raven finds her lips curve into a wide smile. It feels slightly forced, and guilt floods her because of it. “You want me to give him your door number?”

Gina laughs. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “He already knows that.”

Raven arches her eyebrow, surprise swelling within her. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, still shaking her head. Gina walks over to one of her transparent boards, pulled to the corner to make room for the clutter on the floor on the other side of her workbench. Tracing the squiggles, half numbers, half circles, she focuses on Raven’s handwriting instead. “He’s just a friend.”

“Uh huh.”

Gina looks over her shoulder at her. She smiles, and Raven finds hers only widens. “It’s not like that.”

“But it could be,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.

Arching her brow, Gina’s smile doesn’t waver, but her gaze seems to sharpen, no longer as carefree and playful as it'd been moments ago. “Just like you and Kyle?”

Raven finds she deflates, smile slipping immediately from her mouth.

“Thought so,” Gina says, pursing her lips. Looking down at the ground, she nudges a bolt to the side with the toe of her boot. Raven can hear it roll away. “He comes to the bar, asking about you. I haven’t told him anything. It’s not my business to divulge what you tell me over a bottle of tequila.”

Raven’s not sure if she’s meant to say thank you.

“You’re my friend, Raven,” Gina says. When Raven looks up, she finds Gina’s focused on her. Back to the board, she folds her arms against her chest once more. It makes her look relaxed when it does the opposite for her mother. “You can tell me things. In confidence.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “I have a hard time being confident in myself.”

“I’ll tell him to back off.” Gina steps away from the board. Playfully, she rolls her eyes, and her tone turns light as she mocks, “You’ve got important Council duties to tend to.”

Raven rolls her eyes.

Coming to stand on the opposite side of the workbench, Gina rests her hands on top of it. Long fingers, probably soft, save for a few cuts from the glass she undoubtedly has to clean up from her clumsy and drunk patrons. “But you should really consider telling him yourself. He likes you, Reyes. But I have a feeling you don’t like him in the same way.” She lifts a shoulder. “And that’s okay. Sometimes love works in funny ways.”

Arching her brow, Raven pulls a face. “Are you serious with that bullshit?”

Gina laughs, shrugging. “Jasper tried it on me when he was plastered. Thought it was kind of smooth.”

“No wonder people drink around you. You _drive_ them to.”

Gina shakes her head, walking toward her to pull at her other stool. Sliding it along the ground, Raven cringes as she takes a seat. Tapping her fingers against the workbench, she reaches for the radio, looking it over.

When she glances at her from the corner of her eye, he finds Gina's looking at her hands.

“They want me to go,” she says quietly. Keeping her gaze on the radio, she knows Gina’s looking up at her profile. “But you knew that.”

“I told Mom that she made the right choice in supporting Sinclair’s impromptu decision,” she says.

Raven looks up at her, brows furrowing. “It wasn’t discussed?”

“No,” Gina shakes her head. “Not with Jackson or her.”

Pulling back, the radio sits weightlessly in her hands. She finds her brows remain creased as she tries to pull the pieces together, wondering if they’re all to belong to one another once she’s done trying to create a miniature pod out of them once more. She needs to plummet down to earth, and she finds she’s been thrown without so much as a space suit. 

“Is she mad?”

Gina shrugs. “No,” she says, looking at her. “Are you?”

Raven pauses. “What?”

“Are you mad he’s asked you to come along?”

“I …” Raven glances down, letting her eyes drift to her leg. 

Keeping her gaze on her leg, Gina’s voice is gentle when she says, “The only thing that’s holding you back is yourself, you know.” When Raven looks up, she sees Gina looking at her knee. A part of her wants to shield it, throw a blanket over her lap so no one can see it hang oddly against her stool.

“Stop selling yourself short, Reyes,” she continues. Looking up at her, Gina’s lips quirk upwards. “That’s my job.”

Smiling softly, Raven tilts her head toward her, “I thought your job was to get me drunk.”

Gina smiles. “That too.”

Letting the radio drop onto the workbench, Raven presses her palms flat against the grimy and dusty surface. Arching her back, she presses her lips together, and finds herself attempting to battle the silence that drapes over them.

“Do you know what a Philip’s head screwdriver is?” she finds herself asking. 

Gina looks at her like she’s that dog with three heads. The one with the odd name Bellamy seems to like so much. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s not the flat one.”

“Good enough,” Raven smiles. Looking over Gina’s shoulder, she nods toward the set of drawers on the other side of her workstation. Pressed up against the wall, it's an old thing made of wood, slightly lopsided with how it’s lost a wheel. “Grab me one. And the radio cord, if you can. I can’t …”

“It’s okay,” Gina says, moving off her stool. “I know you just want me to bend over, anyway.”

Raven rolls her eyes. Sarcastically, she singsongs, “Your ass is just out of this world."

She walks around the workbench and disappears, picking up the cord she tosses over the bench like it’s some rope being thrown over a cliffside. Raven reaches out and grabs it, plugging the radio back into it. 

Standing, Gina laughs. “No wonder you’re the Zero G.”

It’s a habitual movement to puff out her chest, and Raven finds she does so, feeling elated for the first time in what feels too long. “Youngest in fifty-two years.”

Gina clicks her fingers toward her, pointing her index toward her in agreement. Moving toward the drawers, she begins to open them. As she closes one, she looks over her shoulder and asks, “Did you know Gwyn likes Nathan?”

Raven frowns. “As in Miller?” 

Gina nods her head, then looks back at the drawers. “The one and only. Real smooth talker, that one.”

Raven finds herself smiling. Instead of taking to the radio once more, she lets it sit in her hands as she watches Gina. “Tell me more.”

“ _Well_ , Monroe likes Gwyn, and Miller hasn’t really given Gwyn the time of day, but he has Monroe …”


	10. Bellamy III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _what do you call a sad strawberry?_ or the one where bellamy learns forgiveness isn't a vulnerability.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've made [an "aesthetic"](http://finnicks.tumblr.com/post/141537563702/what-set-you-free-i-need-you-here-by-me-the-one) for bellamy/raven so far. i'll be posting more whenever i get inspired by photoshop. hopefully it'll give you a nice visual for the tone of some of the relationships/characters!
> 
> i'm hoping to update every monday and friday. my plan for now is i can't post an update until i have the next chapter partially written, if only so i can keep the ball rolling. if i end up disappearing, you know i'm stuck, haha.
> 
> anyway, for those of you who are reading for lincoln/octavia, you'll find their journey together will begin very, very soon ... 
> 
> as always, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thank you for reading and commenting! the things you guys have said both here and elsewhere have been amazing, so thank you so much for the encouragement. i hope you continue to enjoy this. ♥

Bellamy’s never seen the outside of the Ark in all of its glory. When he looks at it crumpled on the ground, deformed in how it caves in on itself, he wonders if it had always looked like that. A heap of silver junk.

Squinting against the shine of it, the sun hits it at a particular angle and blinds him from properly taking in just how ugly it is. Even at a distance, he dislikes the silhouette of it.

He thinks to ask Raven if it’d looked so ugly in space, up in the atmosphere where gravity didn’t seem to stretch its arms and envelope the galaxy into its hands. His fingers curl into his empty palm, sweaty and light without the radio tucked inside his grip. 

Though his hand is empty, he can feel a weight press itself into his palm. It’s often Kane’s gaze, whenever he thinks to look back and sweep over his small party, checking to ensure all heads are counted for.

When they’d turned to bid a farewell to Echo, Bellamy had noticed Kane’s eyes linger on his hand. The empty hand that had gripped onto that small radio like it was a lifeline.

A temporary farewell. Kane had been intent to ensure she understood that.

It’s a good distance away from them now, the Ark and the possible confrontation Bellamy knows is inevitable. Kane may not glance over his shoulder at him now, but a quiet promise of them needing to talk much later does. He can feel the tension run up his spine. Curling around him, he balls his hand into a fist, and watches Kane’s back, his hand hovering over the small of Abby’s as though she needs protecting.

That’s the thing about Griffin women. They don’t need it.

“What do you call a sad strawberry?” Monty asks, keeping pace beside him. His footsteps are quiet and quick, leading Bellamy to wonder if he glides along the ground like Hermes does the Greek realms.

Slithering between them, Octavia threads her arm through his. Walking into him, she makes him stumble before he regains his footing, and glances up at him with a childlike and familiar grin before looking to Monty.

Ahead of them is Kane and Abby, almost walking into one another. Sergeant Miller stays to the left of Kane, head bowed as the three of them talk quietly amongst themselves. Ryan, Cynthia, and Jeremy bring up the rear, quieter than the three in front of him.

No Grounders walk with them. Echo and her warriors had stayed behind at their temporary camp despite Kane’s pleas for them to shadow them.

He thinks to glance over his shoulder, as though he can see them in the distance, sitting around Bran and ensuring he was still unconscious. There’s no use; he knows that they’re far from the Ice Nation Grounders now.

“I don’t know,” Octavia says, voice light. He looks down at her and sees her smiling, pulling him closer as she walks into his side. “Tell me.”

Monty seems to smile and blush beneath her heavy stare. “A blueberry.”

Octavia laughs, light and airy, almost like she had when on the Ark. Bellamy finds he smiles at the lost and foreign sound.

“What did one strawberry say to the other strawberry?”

Octavia’s elbow nudges his side. “We’re out of straws?”

Monty smiles, lifting his hand. Fingers curled into his palm save for his index finger, he holds it up, as if asking for her patience. “No, but that’s a good one.” Bellamy shakes his head, looking away from the two of them as Monty continues, “If you weren’t so sweet, we wouldn’t be in this jam!”

Bellamy can’t help but chuckle. Shaking his head, he says, “Don’t use that on any girls, Monty.”

Kane, Abby, and Sergeant Miller slow their pace. Ahead of him, he can see the people of Camp Jaha loitering about, carrying firewood, guns, and even walking themselves across the camp as they disappear into the mouth of the silver beast he’s come to call home again.

Guns are trained on them, but he sees them lower the moment the Guard recognise the head of their party.

Looking back at his sister, he sees Octavia’s brows furrow. “What’s jam?”

Monty shakes his head, looking down at the ground for a moment. The thick grass has disappeared, replaced with dirt and small blades trying to peek through the hard ground and survive. Bellamy finds himself suddenly missing the thick trees and how closely they stood beside one another. 

With a smile, Monty looks up at Octavia and says, “I’ll make you some. It’s really easy. We just have to find the right berries — and ones you like.”

“Cool,” Octavia smiles. “I’ve never made jam before.”

“I’ll teach you.”

Kane, Abby, and Sergeant Miller stop walking, the rest of the party slowly following suit. Sergeant Miller bellows, “Open up!” and the command is repeated by another officer, parroting it. There’s a loud sound, one that echoes through the ground beneath his feet. Like how Bellamy’s always figured Hades to operate, the ferryman allows them access with the two metal doors groaning open.

Octavia’s arm wraps tighter around his, her footsteps a second behind his own when he begins to walk again.

The threshold of the gates is a slight dip in the earth from how many times they’ve walked in and out of the camp. As he’s about to cross it, wanting to stride over the slight dip every foot seems to find, Abby sidesteps away from Kane and Sergeant Miller and toward the frame holding the gate upright.

At her pointed gaze, he steps to the side, Octavia following him. Monty walks by, glancing back at them, but continues to walk inside of the camp. Bellamy watches him, noticing how he spies Miller standing beside the Ark in the shade, and walks over toward him and claps his hand against his.

“Bellamy,” Abby says, drawing his attention back to her. “Can I talk to you?” She glances toward Octavia, swallowing thickly. Looking back at him, she clarifies, “Alone.”

His sister’s hold on him only tightens. Feeling her straighten, puffing out her chest as she stands against his side, he sees Abby take her in, lips parting as she lets out a breath.

“Whatever you have to say, you can say to her as well,” he says. Abby presses her lips together. He wonders, for a moment, if she’ll press.

Abby doesn’t respond immediately. Looking at him, he figures she expects him to break, but Bellamy doesn’t feel himself crumbling at all. He isn’t some tower built from the toughest of stone. That’s always been Octavia.

He watches as her eyes shift toward his sister, and he can only imagine how she appears to her. No longer the small, thin girl she’d been when they’d arrested her, Octavia wears her fear on her sleeves like it’s a pair of gauntlets. 

He wonders if she’ll toss them to the ground any moment now.

Abby looks at Octavia’s arm in his, then her gaze shifts downward to his own hand in his sister’s. Fingers falling into the spaces of her own, he feels Octavia’s grip so strongly it almost shatters his bones.

“Okay,” Abby says, looking up at him. Titling her head to the side, she begins to walk along the fence of the camp. Bellamy makes sure to keep in step with her even with Octavia by his side.

“I need to talk to you about something important,” she begins. Her head remains bowed as she walks. Hands clasped together for a moment, she releases them, and Bellamy finds she leads them toward a corner of the fence that’s shaded heavily by a cluster of trees. Considering how open their camp is, how hot and dry it is in the middle of the day, finding trees, even a patch of shade formed by something other than the Ark, has been hard.

If they had a choice on where they got to crash, Bellamy thinks he’d choose where the drop ship’s remains lie.

Turning around, she stands before him. Hands clasped in front of her, Abby’s arms are as straight as her gaze on him.

He sees her eyes flicker to Octavia as she opens her mouth and draws in a breath, but inevitably settles on him once more.

“I’m releasing Lincoln,” she says. Octavia’s grip on his hand tightens. “It's been two weeks, and I believe the red drug is out of his system.”

Octavia almost leaps forward. Looking down at her, he sees she’s bright with hope. “That’s good, right?”

“Yes,” Abby smiles. Bellamy finds he’s calm at the sight of the curve of her mouth, at the sincerity in its shape. “Very good. But given we don't know much about the drug, it's properties, or even the side effects, we’re still left in the dark. Until we go into the mountain and find out more information, we won’t be able to do much more.” Abby looks at Octavia earnestly. “We want to do all we can for him, Octavia.” 

Octavia’s nodding, brows furrowed as she tries to grasp this information. Bellamy barely follows, but given what he knows, of what he’s seen of Lincoln first-hand, what Abby intends to do inside of the mountain is help him. 

She continues, “Regardless of what we find, he needs a carer.”

Bellamy tilts his head toward his sister. “O can look after him.”

After a moment and a glance toward Octavia, Abby shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I’m afraid that your sister can care for him, but not in the way he needs.”

Finding himself confused, he feels Octavia stiffen beside him. Gripping her hand, he keeps her in place when he feels her begin to shift toward Abby. “Go —”

“ _O_ ,” Bellamy says quietly, hand gripping hers. She looks up at him, expression crumbling, and he shakes his head gently. 

Taking advantage of the interruption, Abby continues, “I think it’s for the best I don’t release him unless I believe he will be monitored closely.” Octavia grits her teeth before opening her mouth. Bellamy’s hold on her hand only tightens, silently communicating to her to remain at bay. Keep her feet flat on the ground. Stay quiet. It’s a drill he hates repeating, especially to his sister. “We understand he isn’t a Reaper. We’re not concerned he’s a danger to the camp, but I fear he could be for himself.”

Turning to face Abby, his brows furrow as he asks, “What does he need?”

“You'll look after him.” Abby says, her voice slightly warm. It isn’t as sharp as the tools he often associates with the medical bay. Where that portion of the Ark is the coldest for him, Abby’s words see him relax, even though he can hear the command inside of them. 

If he doesn’t look after Lincoln, he knows what will happen. 

Another weight settles upon his shoulders, slowly building a wall upon the foundation of him. _Your sister, your responsibility_. Abby’s tone isn’t as commanding, as authoritative or as desperate, as Mom’s had been. But he can hear it echo inside of their unit on the Ark. The walls had been hollow then. Where he stands now, there’s nothing for a voice to bounce off of and frighten him.

Abby continues, “Ensure he's okay, that he's himself. He needs someone who will look out for him in a way that your sister isn't capable.”

Octavia sucks in a breath, prepared to launch a tirade against Abby. Bellamy’s quick to interject. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “I’ll do it. I’ll keep a close eye on him.”

“Thank you,” Abby says, smiling softly. Her hands don’t unclasp from in front of her. “You can be his carer on one condition.” She stands taller, pulling her shoulders back, and it’s within that moment Bellamy understands she’s the Chancellor now. No longer Abby Griffin, Head of Medical, she’s stepped into her new role.

Truth be told, he prefers her in her older one. 

Watching her expression, he finds himself slowly teetering on the edge of worry. At first, her face is blank when she inhales, preparing to speak again, but she stops herself and glances down at the ground for a mere moment. But it’s all he needs to feel his hackles rise. 

Looking up at him, her composure breaks as her voice crumbles, “Tell me where my daughter is.”

Bellamy opens his mouth and shakes his head. Feeling his shoulders move, Octavia’s hand is tighter in his, fingernails digging into the back of his hands. He can feel her gaze burn into his profile. He doesn’t want to look at either of them, doesn’t wish to be _seen_ by the two of them.

Quietly, he says, “I don't know, Chancellor.” He thinks Abby flinches.

Abby’s composure remains as dust on the ground. He sees her come to him in the shape of someone he’s only glanced at a few times during his time in Camp Jaha. She doesn’t approach him as the leader of his people, as the head of a particular department still lingering in the broken skeleton of the Ark.

She comes to him as a mother would.

She appears smaller before him. Her voice breaks when she pleads, “Then please tell me what happened in that mountain.”

And it’s a mother that would corner him as she does now. He wants to move into the shadows, be swallowed whole by the cluster of trees beside the fence. He wants a member of the Guard to call her over, for Kane to shout for Abby as he requires her assistance immediately. He wants Jackson to crawl out of the Ark and shout her name, and for that to be it, enough of a lasso to drag her away from him right now.

He tries to build his walls, stone by stone, block of metal upon block of metal. But she can still peer over and see him, pressing her fingers into the cracks of the stones as she does the flesh and bone of those she saves.

He’s not quick enough in constructing his blocks. Octavia’s fist pummels it when her hand squeezes his almost painfully.

She shifts beside him, and Bellamy feels as though he’s caught. Bowing his head, he’s quiet for a long moment.

“Clarke shot Dante Wallace. That's why they traded Raven for you.” It’s after a moment he realises the quiet voice had been his.

What transpired in that mountain is different for both him and Clarke. He knows that, and thinks of it now, weighing his words as he hides his expression. Thick hair in his face, he thinks to bow his head even more so she can’t see the slight furrow to his brows.

Keeping it to Clarke’s story is easier than acknowledging that there’s a tome sitting in his hands titled after his own. She doesn’t care for his, and neither does he.

Abby looks down, then nods. The breath she releases is soft, but it’s strong enough to shake the ground from underneath him. When he looks up, he notices how her face then crumbles. “Why is she going to Polis? What has this got to do with Lexa?”

Bellamy looks over her shoulder. “She feels responsible. She has to fix it.”

“She's just a kid —“

Pity floods him. Tilting his head, he shakes his head when he looks at her. “She stopped being a kid the moment they sent her down here to die. The things we've done to survive, she's let it define her.” He feels tired, and knows he sounds it when he sighs, “It's a burden you can't relieve her of, Abby.”

_Trust me, I tried._

Abby opens her mouth, but he knows there’s nothing she can say. There’s no words _he_ can give her to grant her the comfort she seeks. He’s still searching for his own.

Untangling his fingers from Octavia’s, he feels her arm slowly slide out of his. He doesn’t look at his sister, even though he can feel her pointed stare burn the side of his face. “Take me to Lincoln. I told you what I know.”

Octavia nudges his elbow hard. Almost trying to crawl up the length of him as she had as a child, he tries to throw her off by remaining still and unresponsive beneath her touch. She whispers, “I want to come, Bell.”

Bellamy looks down at Octavia, hand reaching out to wrap his fingers around her elbow. “I’ve got this, O. Let me make sure he’s okay first.”

Octavia digs her heels into the ground, but he sees her relent with the breath she releases and the sag of her shoulders.

Turning to look at Abby, he sees her expression is still drooping with disappointment. He waits for her to shake her head, inform him the deal’s off. It’s the type of politics he’s become used to. It’s how it’d been with Commander Shumway and the Grounders.

Abby’s expression is unreadable. She looks to Octavia, then him, before she says, “Come with me.” She doesn’t wait as she steps to the side of them and leads him toward the mouth of the broken Ark.

*

The hallway to Room 302 is narrower than Bellamy remembers. When he’d been on the Ark, he’d gone to great lengths to study each corridor, from how wide it was to how busy it happened to be. He doesn’t remember much of this one, unable to recall if he’d ever walked down its length before, but he finds it to be harrowing in how quiet it is.

Abby’s heeled boot clicks against the ground, a beat that he finds his heart pounds to. She walks ahead of him with a confidence he finds himself relieved to see. There’s something about Abby Griffin that’s familiar. He finds it’s the way she holds her shoulders back, the manner in which she walks, the way she simply holds herself that reminds him painfully of Clarke.

Remaining quiet, he doesn’t so much as respond to her when she informs him Lincoln’s down the end of the hall.

Looking over her shoulder, and along the sides of the corridor, seeing how the numbers start at 298 and count down, he finds the door to Room 302 isn't closed.

Inside is a woman with blonde hair neatly braided down her back. She’s dressed in dark clothing, similar to what Jackson wears when he’s fluttering about the medical bay. Sitting in a chair across from Lincoln, who sits on the edge of a bed, she talks quietly to him. Their voices are soft murmurs, words tangled together despite Bellamy’s attempts to unthread them.

It’s a box of a room. Small, but reasonably sized enough for one person, he can see there’s a small room off to the right with a bathroom. A cupboard for clothes, a chest of drawers by the bed, and a little notebook he thinks is Lincoln’s sitting on the top. The bed is a single with a thin mattress and a thick, unravelling blanket untucked and half pooling on the ground.

“Claire,” Abby says, leaning against the doorframe. The woman looks up at her and nods toward Lincoln, standing to her feet a moment later. She’s short with broad shoulders and bright blue eyes. Bellamy only looks at her for a second before focusing on Lincoln.

Standing to the side of Abby, he watches as his friend seems to try and make himself smaller. Back hunched, hands clasped together in front of him, Lincoln looks at Abby, then over her shoulder at him. He glances away for a moment, but inevitably stands.

Gaze lingering on him, Lincoln eventually turns to look at Abby. “I’m free to go now?”

Abby nods. “Yes.”

Lincoln remains in place. Nodding to himself for a moment, he turns on his foot, as though he’s uncertain of what to do next, then holds out his hands to take Claire’s in his. It’s a soft gesture, one Bellamy would never have thought he’d see from Lincoln, but he finds it suits him all the same.

He murmurs something, possibly a kind word or two since Claire smiles. Letting go of her hands, Lincoln turns to look at the doorway, eyes lingering on Abby. His gaze settles on him, and he finds Lincoln lowers it almost immediately.

She doesn’t move from where she leans against the doorframe. Bellamy takes a few steps back to give Lincoln room to exit.

Dressed in ripped and dirtied jeans and a blue shirt, Lincoln looks misplaced. The layers are too thin on him, the blue colours not right on a man Bellamy’s only seen in black and thick coats and dark pants. 

Touching Abby’s upper arm as he passes, Lincoln doesn’t lead the way down the corridor. Bellamy doesn’t realise he’s none too keen to turn his back to his friend.

“I know why you’re here,” Lincoln says. His head remains bowed, as though he’s afraid to look him in the eye now that he’s out of the room. Voice remaining quiet, he continues, “And thank you.”

Suddenly feeling confronted, as though Lincoln’s thrown his fist and shattered the stone wall Bellamy hadn’t realised he’d built between them in the moments it’d taken for him to leave the room, he looks away. Bellamy shrugs his shoulders. “Come on,” he says. “O’s waiting.”

Taking a step away from him, Bellamy’s determined to not look back.

“Wait,” Lincoln reaches out to grab his arm. Bellamy glances down at where Lincoln holds him, and finds Lincoln does the same. Looking at his fingers, he lets his elbow go. “I wanted to say something to you.” Bellamy waits, glancing over toward Abby who seems to watch them with interest. “I’m sorry for what happened in the mountain.”

Bellamy looks back at him. “Look, Lincoln —”

“We had a plan, and I let you down. I was too weak.”

 _Now isn’t the time_ , he thinks to say. _Not here. Not in front of her._

But it isn't the time for _him_. It’s the time for Lincoln.

Bellamy thinks to grant him that.

Tilting his head, Bellamy forgets Abby’s there for a moment. His voice remains quiet, but it isn’t out of a need to keep his words away from Abby. He finds it’s only appropriate he doesn’t bellow it out toward him. Lincoln’s always been a quiet person in comparison to him. “It was the drug.”

“It was also me.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore —”

“It does to me,” Lincoln says, voice a little louder. He clears his throat, and stands taller. Pushing his shoulders back, he takes a breath in, like he needs to ground himself. “You trusted me to have your back, and I let you down. It’s important to me I make it right. I can’t let you do this if you don’t know at least that.”

Bellamy nods. It’s all he can do, nodding along to what he thinks isn’t right. If Lincoln needs to rip himself open to stitch his skin back together again, then Bellamy’s hands will remain by his sides as he does so. But from where he’s standing, the seams of Lincoln are stitched so tightly he finds himself envious of how composed he is while vulnerable.

After a long moment, Bellamy says, “I forgive you.” He reaches out to clasp his shoulder, and finds that the words and movement are easy for him. It isn’t an act. There’s no pressure being applied by himself to push through the resentment he finds doesn’t quite linger on the webbing of his hand as he squeezes Lincoln’s shoulder tighter. 

Lincoln looks up at him, and Bellamy finds his eyes shine. He’s not surprised by his vision blurring.

Gently, he says, “Now, forgive yourself.” 

Lincoln looks at him long and hard, then nods, reluctantly.

He waits for him to take a step, and falls into stride with him. The corridor had once felt small, and still does when he glances behind him to look back at Abby watching them, her expression falling as he thinks her mind wanders into the woods to search for Clarke, but it seems wider now with Lincoln by his side.

Walking beside him, Bellamy’s unsurprised Lincoln keeps in step with him. He doesn’t linger behind him, trailing as though he’s a shadow. Though he wonders if he knows these corridors at all, he doesn’t ask.

But the question Lincoln lets slip is expected, and Bellamy finds he has to suppress his smile. 

“How’s Octavia?”

 Glancing toward Lincoln, he waits until his friend is looking at him before he answers. “Worried about you.”

Lincoln nods, as if expecting it. He doesn’t pry. Leaving Lincoln be, he looks ahead of them and takes the next corner. Stepping behind him as he finds a man with thick blonde hair runs by them, he hears Lincoln toss over his shoulder, “How did the excursion go?”

Bellamy arches his brow, coming to walk beside him.

Lincoln explains, “Abby thought it was a good idea I be kept informed. So I could transition easier. Feel like I wasn’t …” He moves his hand in front of him, searching for the words as his brows crease. He looks down at the ground, but Bellamy doubts he finds the words there. 

This time, Lincoln steps behind him when Monroe and Harper run by. Without stopping, he hears them say hello with a laugh, chasing after one another as their laughter echoes through the corridor. Bellamy glances over his shoulder to watch them, finding he smiles at the sight of Monroe tug Harper around the corner quickly.

Moving to his side again, Lincoln asks, “Did they give you trouble?” At the furrow of his brow, Lincoln clarifies, “ _Azgeda_.”

Bellamy shrugs. In truth, he wants to tell him how strange it’d been, of how warm Echo was toward him. It hadn’t been a complete surprise, but the ease in which her warriors fell into line in trusting them _had_ been.

Not wanting to overwhelm him, he keeps his tone conversational. “Echo’s warriors built a small camp. One of them was injured. His hand had been cut off.”

Lincoln’s pace slows, and Bellamy follows, strides no longer as long nor as quick as they’d been before. Brows creasing together, he asks, “Cut off?”

“Clean.” He cuts his hand through air, hitting his wrist lightly as if Lincoln requires a show and tell. “One of the Grounders said it was from a Reaper.”

Lincoln falls silent, looking off to the side.

Unable to shake the uncertainty sitting on his shoulders, Bellamy continues, “There were none. I think their camp was a little far from their jurisdiction.”

“Reapers care very little for borders, Bellamy,” Lincoln says, gravely. “They go where they please. Where the blood and the drug take them.”

They turn the corner together, Lincoln a step behind him. The sun is bright as it pours into the mouth of the Ark. Despite the people bustling in and out of it, Bellamy still shields his eyes from the bright glare on the silver until they settle. Lincoln does the same, dropping his hand once his eyes adjust to the sudden bright light.

“Cage Wallace is dead,” Lincoln says quietly.

“I know,” Bellamy frowns. Lincoln looks up at him, brows furrowing. “There’s no way he could survive out in the woods alone.”

“You did.”

His lips quirk upward. “I had one hundred kids at my back. He had no one. And there’s no way in hell a guy like him could survive a damn Reaper.”

With a pressed suit, proper shoulder pads, and a collar that never seemed to dip beneath his blazer, President Wallace resembled his father. Prim and proper and completely out of his depth when it came to the harsh and gritty survival the outside world required of its people.

Lincoln stops walking. Moving toward the wall near the mouth of the Ark, Bellamy can now see outside. Miller’s near the front gate, talking to his father, with the guards positioned around them, lingering along the fence. He searches for Octavia despite knowing she’ll be out of view.

“Who was the injured _Azgeda gona_?”

It takes him a moment to work out the words. Pulling them apart, he restitches them together, attempting to form a semblance of a meaning for himself. It’s moments like these he’s grateful for Octavia trying to teach him word after word.

But he hadn’t learned that one from his sister. Inside of the mountain, bouncing off the bars of a cage, he’d heard _gona_ uttered over and over, even shouted as a war cry.

Bellamy looks to Lincoln, brows furrowing. “Bran.”

Lincoln nods. It’s then he wonders if Lincoln knows anyone from the Ice Nation. From what he understands of the Grounders, they’d been split until the great Heda had threaded them all together, creating a supposedly strong patchwork of the twelve clans.

“You know him?”

“Barely,” he says. “One of the Reapers …” Lincoln shakes his head. “Sometimes you become lucid under the drug. One of them said that name.”

“Maybe they were from the Ice Nation.”

Lincoln lifts a shoulder. “Maybe.”

Bellamy turns and leads them the rest of the way to the entrance of the Ark. Stepping outside of it, the air feels a little crisper than it had earlier.

Jumping off of the ledge of the step outside, Bellamy walks until he sees his sister to his left. Monty’s project looks as though he’s simply digging up dirt. Small mounds outline his specific area, a shovel sitting upright in the dirt as Monty points down at the ground and his sister stomps her foot against it.

Bellamy cocks his head toward them, but finds Lincoln doesn’t follow him by taking a step when he does. When he looks at him, Lincoln’s gaze is on Octavia. He wonders if she can feel the heat of his stare on her back.

She looks up, and Bellamy watches as her entire face brightens. Pulling herself to her feet, she smiles widely, and runs. Lincoln leaves his side, strides long and quick, and he watches as Octavia launches herself into Lincoln’s arms.

He glances away when Octavia’s hands cradle Lincoln’s face and she kisses him.

“Cute,” he hears. Raven pushes herself to stand beside him. “I’m surprised there’s no birds singing around them at this very moment.”

His brows furrow. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. She shuffles into the shade. Forehead damp with sweat, loose strands of hair sticking to her forehead and against her neck, Raven looks as though she’s been burned underneath the sun with how red her skin is. “Something Harper told me. It doesn’t matter.”

He follows her gaze and looks out at the ground, watching Octavia lead Lincoln by the hand to Monty’s corner. Lifting his hand to wave, Monty slips them into the pockets of his pants. He can see his mouth open, but can’t hear his words when he hears the sound of a hammer beat itself hard and fast against the inside of the Ark.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” he asks, looking back at her.

Raven’s shoulders pull upward, making her look small. Sliding her hands into the pockets of her pants, she glances down. Her brace is dull against the sunlight.

Looking back at Octavia, he licks his lips, finding his mouth suddenly dry. Crossing his arms against his chest, he leans toward Raven when he looks at her. “I’ve got your back,” he says. “You’re going to be okay.”

She presses her lips together, then looks out at the camp grounds. Not once does she look at him, not even from the corner of her eye. Her brows crease together as she quietly says, “I just can’t shake this feeling that it’s a bad idea.”

“What? You coming along?”

She looks at him, and he finds her expression is open. Brows no longer creasing together, he finds a vulnerability in her features that makes her glow as the sun does when it’s about to set. “Yeah,” she breathes out. “This is a stupid plan. Taking the cripple —”

“The Zero G genius,” he smiles.

She rolls her eyes.

When he nudges her with his elbow, he realises how close he’s standing next to her. It’s easy to lean into her if he chooses to. But he doesn’t. Staying where he is, upright and not touching her, he looks down at her and finds that he’s close enough as it is. “We need you, Raven. You can choose in what capacity and how, but the fact is we need you. We need that head of yours if we’re going to make the ground survivable.”

For a long moment, she looks to the ground. Arms crossing over her own chest, he notices how tightly they try to trap her in a vice-like grip. But Raven’s always been piss-poor in caging herself. 

She looks at him, eyes shining, and he finds himself pinned beneath her warm and hopeful expression.

“You’re more than just your leg,” he says, shrugging. Looking away from her quickly, he watches Octavia sway into Lincoln’s side, hand still in his. He can feel Raven’s gaze on him and ignores it for as long as he can stand. 

Glancing from the corner of his eye, he sees her staring at him, lips parted, her expression slightly vulnerable. It reminds him of how the radio had sometimes felt warm in his hand, not from being used for long periods of time, but for how warm he’d felt hearing her voice on the other end.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, shifting on his feet. Digging his hands into his back pockets, he pulls out a few leaves. Green, brown, half crumpled, half torn. He holds them out for her to take. Spilling them into her open palm, he says, “I brought these for you.”

She stares down at her hands. Bunching one, he hears them crumple in her grip. “Leaves.”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “There’s plenty more out there, Raven. Maybe you should come check them out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATIONS:
> 
> _gona:_ Warrior.



	11. Octavia III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _you're a gona_. or the one where octavia begins to learn the true meaning of being a warrior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was a bit of a hard one to write, only because i've never quite written lincoln before. hopefully you'll enjoy the lincoln/octavia goodness of this chapter, since it was, despite its difficulties, really enjoyable to write their dynamic.
> 
> as always, unbeta'd. all mistakes are mine! thank you for reading and commenting. ♥

“You know, I could get used to this,” she murmurs. Lincoln’s arm is thrown around her waist, his chest pressed against her back. She thinks to turn in his arms to face him, but feeling him wrap himself around her is better than the emptiness of the space he now occupies.

His room in the Ark is small, just like she remembers those four walls to feel. Sparse and undecorated, it feels much like his cave, save for the lack of drawings on the walls. Her bed hasn’t been slept in, abandoned for the mattress of the grass outside. 

With Lincoln here to wrap her in the blanket of his arms, she finds the suffocating feeling that had pressed down upon her chest too heavily has since lifted. It may be dark, save for the flickering light of the candles on the chest of drawers and little table, but it doesn’t smother her as it had before.

Pulling his hand closer to her collarbone, she presses it flat against the base of her throat. His fingers tap against her skin lightly, his smile pressed into the back of her neck.

“Used to what?” he asks, voice warm. She feels him brush his mouth against the back of her head. 

Octavia’s quiet for a long moment, concentrating on his movements. For someone so big, he barely shifts the bed, his movements being so gentle and light. Quietly, she answers, “You being here.” Rolling onto her back, she peers up at him. “Waking up with you. It’s been lonely, Lincoln.”

His face falls. She reaches out to press her fingers against the corner of his lips, wishing to see it curve upward once more. “I know,” he murmurs. His lips curve downward once her hands slip away.

Immediately, she brushes her fingers against his lips, tracing them. He doesn’t so much as move them under her touch, but she can see something within him crack. Lincoln’s never been the type to build himself into stone, but she wonders if her gaze is hardening him now.

Her fingers press harder into his cheeks in the hopes that’s what he needs to crumble.

Puffing out his cheek with air beneath her fingers, he smiles when she does. It’s small and soft, warming her nonetheless. “I don’t trust myself, Octavia,” he says. 

Her brows crinkle. Thumb brushing against the apple of his cheek, she whispers, “I trust you.”

Lincoln inhales, and shifts his head away from her touch. She thinks to follow him, pressing her hand into his cheek, along his jaw. Like a child, she wants to chase him as though he’s a butterfly, but she’s since learned some insects like to be left alone to flutter into a spiderweb. He doesn’t look at her, glancing down at her hand resting on her collarbone instead. “There are things I need to tell you. But you have to give me time. I’m not ready to admit them to myself.”

She shifts beneath him. He hovers over her like he’s her protector, but Octavia doesn’t believe she’s the one who needs a shield. He doesn’t so much as move back when she shuffles against the bed, foot kicking his ankle. “You know I'm always here. I'll always listen —”

“It’s not about that,” he smiles, tilting his head. His hand reaches up to brush against her cheek. She leans into it, wishing to chase it with how she curves her neck to follow his fingers trailing down her jaw. He doesn’t look up at her, watching his fingers slowly trace her jawline. “I'm not afraid you’ll see me differently.”

Shifting beneath him, she accidentally bumps his hand away. Gazing at him, she hopes her pointed stare will see him look at her. “But you'll tell me. Right? When you're ready?”

Looking at her, he nods. “Yes.”

“Good,” she breathes out. Finding something within her chest shifts, she settles back into her pillow. It’s soft and comfortable, easing her into relaxing once more as she looks up at her star. Her hand curls around his naked shoulder, fingers digging into the bone. With her touch hard, her voice remains soft, yet sharp in its own conviction, when she says, “You’re a Grounder, Lincoln. You get knocked down, you get up again.”

His smile seems sadder. Her hand squeezes his shoulder harder, her other one wrapping around his wrist where he rests his hand against her side. She thinks he’s about to roll over, slip away into the night, but with the slight shift of his body, she finds Lincoln remains hovering over her, resting on his side, his gaze simply retreating from her. 

“That’s the thing, Octavia.” His voice is a soft, pitiful thing that causes her face to pinch. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Lifting herself up jerkily, he moves back and onto his knees as she sits. Hands seeking his own, she squeezes her fingers into his palms, hoping his lifelines somehow open up and accept her touch pressing her faith into him. She waits until he looks at her, pressing her thumb hard into the soft fleshy bit of his wrist. “ _I_ do,” she says, voice hard. It almost sounds like a hiss. “You’re Lincoln. You’re a _gona_. You don't give up. You _never_ give up.” She notices how his gaze drops, how his eyes become slightly shiny. 

Ducking her head, she tries to capture his gaze. “You’re Lincoln kom Skaikru.” Releasing his hand, she brushes hers against his cheek. Tracing along his jawline, she tilts his head up. “You're Lincoln kom Bleikru. Don’t you _ever_ forget it.”

*

She doesn’t know what this room used to be on the Ark. From memory, she thinks it could serve as the main deck where they’d held their Unity Day dance. The walls look the same as she remembers them, as flooded with people as it had been then. Spacious and large, she thinks this is where they held their announcements, their parades for Unity Day and their dances much later. She can’t be sure. The person she wants to ask isn’t here.

There’s chairs lined up in rows, split into two with an aisle of space wedged in the middle. In front of them is a little stage, even though the ground hasn’t been lifted into a platform for Abby and Kane to stand on. She can sense that they’re the main focus of this meeting, even though they stand before everyone, huddled together as though they’re the only two people on this earth.

Octavia’s been standing at the back, shoulders pressed against the hard metallic wall for so long now. Her legs cross at the ankle as an ache begins to swell at the base of her neck, but she ignores it. Lincoln stands beside her, arms crossed over his chest as he observes everyone like they’re a flock of birds settling in their tree.

This is Mount Olympus, but she wonders which god she happens to be in this meeting.

She doesn’t notice Monty walks in, taking a seat in front of her. Where she can see Jasper a few rows ahead, Monty seems keen to stick to the back and its shadows. Or maybe he simply wants to sit near her.

He waves at her, but she keeps her gaze straight ahead. She’s waiting for someone, and the moment he walks in, she doesn’t let her gaze waver. Eyes pinned on the back of Bellamy’s head, she can see Lincoln lift his hand and wiggle his fingers at Monty.

They speak, and she grunts, but she keeps her eyes stitched to the fine, curly hairs of her brother’s head. Standing at the front near Kane and Abby, he joins their little huddle. It’s a strange sight — and feeling — seeing him stand at the front when he’s always been keen for the shadows at the back. Kane wears his black Guard jacket, Abby her grey long-sleeved shirt, and Bellamy wears his blue one. He lacks the jacket, which causes her hackles to rise.

Octavia’s pulled away from observing her brother intently when Monty rises from his seat. Following his movements, she sees Raven hobbling in. Her leg looks heavy to pick up, brace shiny and thin in its silver contraption wrapped around her leg.

She walks to the second seat inside of the row. “Hey,” Raven says, smiling. Octavia thinks she looks tired. Before she sits down, she looks to Lincoln, hands curling around the top of her seat. She leans against the plastic chair like it’s a pillar meant to hold her up. Octavia waits for it to break beneath her strength. Raven’s smile seems to grow wider when Lincoln looks at her. “Nice to see you out and about. Forgot what your face looked like.”

Lincoln ducks his head, as if embarrassed. Octavia finds herself smiling at the sight of it. “It’s nice to be about.”

"You're such a gentleman, Green,” Raven nods toward him. He’s still standing, hand gesturing for her to take the seat she stands before, or even the third, the one he stands near now. Sitting down on the chair, she twists her body around to rest her arm against the top of it.

Monty shrugs. “I try,” he says, sitting down beside Raven. “It doesn't come easily.” She shoves his shoulder.

Raven turns to look at her. Resting her arm along the back of the seat again, she tosses her thumb in the general direction of the front. To Bellamy, Octavia presumes. “You know what this is about?”

Lifting her gaze, Octavia doesn’t return it to Raven. “Mount Weather.” It takes her a long time to pull her gaze away from Bellamy. Miller’s joined them at the front of the room, his hand reaching up to shake Bellamy’s shoulder. Monty looks at her, eyebrow arched in puzzlement. She curls her fingers into her palms and feels her blunt nails bite at her skin. Easily, she says, “Bellamy.”

Raven looks toward the front of the room, and it’s as though that’s all it takes, a gentle, surprised gaze, to pull Bellamy from his conversation with Miller to look their way. His gaze begins on Raven and ends on her; Octavia drops hers to the ground as quickly as she can. 

When she looks back up, Raven’s studying her. “He’s really got their ear, huh?”

“Or passcode,” Monty grins.

Raven arches her brow when she looks at Monty. He shrugs. “You have your thing, I have mine.”

Octavia ignores them both. Lifting her gaze to Bellamy, she finds he’s gesturing with his hands. It’s a soft gesture, a small one. She doesn’t need to push herself from the wall to charge toward the front of the room just yet.

A little too sharply, she asks, “You don’t think it’s weird?”

Raven’s brow furrows. “What is?”

Octavia tilts her head toward Bellamy standing beside Kane. Miller’s hand presses against Bellamy’s back, dropping it a moment later when he laughs a little too loudly. Bellamy doesn’t seem to make a noise. His back’s still to her, but Octavia thinks, by the easiness of his posture, that he’s amused.

“No,” Lincoln says, shaking his head. “Not at all.”

She looks at him, arching her brow.

“If you show yourself worthy of respect, you earn respect,” Lincoln says, patiently. Octavia finds her gaze moves to the front of the room once more, piercing through the people who filter in and take a seat directly in the line of her vision. Her eyes don’t stop at Bellamy, but sweep over to watch Kane and Abby speak easily to her brother. “It’s how the people of my clan earned their positions. You may have been the son or daughter of a respected warrior, but you began with everyone else. You had to prove yourself worthy to be seen, and ensured you remained seen. It was harder for them. They were expected to be the best of the best.”

Monty shifts in his seat. Turning until half his body is facing toward them, he asks, “Did you have people like the Council?”

“Yes,” Lincoln says. She can see him looking at her from the corner of her eye. “Anya was a respected warrior.”

“Did you have rules?” Octavia looks to him. Her arms tighten around her chest, fingers gripping the fabric of her jacket tightly. Her chest feels hot as she thinks to challenge him and his easy understanding of the Ark. _It isn’t so simple_ , she wants to tell him. _It’s never been kind to my family._ “You have the one thousand cuts, but that's more of a punishment, isn’t it?”

Lincoln’s gaze is gentle. Octavia realises, belatedly, that there’d been a sharp panic to her voice. Feeling her face heat, she finds his gentle tone settles her down. “We didn’t punish people for having more than one child, Octavia.” He reaches out to touch her elbow gently. “The ground gave us a leniency the Ark couldn’t.”

“Are you sure?” Octavia looks over at Bellamy, watching him walk slowly down the walkway alongside Miller.

“Your brother isn’t just a cadet, Octavia,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about him. History won’t repeat itself.” He tilts her head to look up at him. Reluctantly she allows his hand to do so. “I promise.”

Her arms unwrap from across her chest, hand reaching out to grip his sleeve. She steps into him, or he does to her. She isn’t so sure who makes the move, but she feels as though his shadow keeps her safe from the world within this moment. “You don’t know that, Lincoln.”

Lincoln leans in toward her, his lips curving up into a soft and amused smile. His voice is akin to a gentle caress when he says, “I know you, and I know Bellamy. It won’t happen again.”

“Neither will Bellamy,” Raven says. Octavia looks toward her. Lincoln takes a small step back from her, his sleeve still caught between her fingers. No longer leaning into her space, she finds herself exposed to the brightness of this faux meeting room. Raven leans harder against the back of her plastic chair. Lowering her voice, she keeps her gaze on her. “It’s not the place, but it seems like the time. When he was inside of that mountain, the moment he realised you were at Tondc, he wanted to blow the entire operation to hell. You’re an idiot if you don’t think him having Kane’s ear doesn’t mean good things.”

Octavia looks down.

“And we’ve got your back,” Monty says. His voice doesn’t surprise her, but the conviction in his tone does. Monty Green has never been a hard boy — or man. She supposes she should think of him like that now, a man capable of being like stone with a soft, gooey centre.

It’s a little difficult to, though, with the way he grins at her like he’s a little boy, hopeful and naive to the cruelty of the world like she once was. He looks to her, then Lincoln. “I mean. I’m just me, but it helps to have a friend, right? You’re cool, Lincoln. You laughed at my joke.”

Lincoln smiles. “It was a funny joke.”

Raven purses her lips together, looking unamused. “What was it?”

Monty grins, and shifts on his seat, the legs scraping along the solid floor. “What do you call a strawberry that uses foul language?”

Lincoln shifts on his feet, his smile widening. Octavia finds herself looking back and forth between them, unsure if she wants to be captivated by the shape of his mouth or the joke. “Berry Rude.”

Raven laughs.

“Are you telling that joke again, Monty?” Harper stands at the end of their row, moving along it as she passes Monty’s legs tucked beneath his seat and sits beside him.

He puffs out his chest, turning his body to look at her. “It’s one of my best.”

Harper raises her hand in a silent greeting, then turns to Monty, back straight against her chair. Chin pointed upward, she arches her brow in a challenge. “I know a better one.”

“You can’t top Berry, Harper.”

“I can.”

Monroe stands in the row in front of them, taking to the chair right in front of Monty. Resting her knees on it, she wraps her fingers around the back of it and leans forward. “I know a better one.”

Miller stands beside Monroe, flicking her ear. “In Harper’s dreams,” he says. He sits beside Monroe, throwing his arm over his chair to look at them with a warm and amused grin.

“My dreams are great,” Harper says, turning to look at him. Crossing her arms against her chest, Octavia can see her smile grows confident, though there’s a redness to her cheeks and neck her long hair can’t hide. “You’re usually naked in them.”

Miller rolls his eyes while Monroe rocks on her chair, laughing loudly.

“Don’t talk about nudity in front of my sister.” Bellamy stands at the end of the last row, looking at them with an amused grin. Octavia finds herself warming at the sight of it.

Rolling her eyes, she warns, “Bell.”

Taking the end seat, Bellamy sits next to Raven. He doesn’t turn his body around, but faces forward. Leaning his head back, he looks at her upside down, his mouth still in a grin that seems to widen at the sight of her own.

“I’m sure your sister has seen things,” Monroe says.

Bellamy rights himself and looks at Monroe pointedly. Hands pressing down into his jeans, he leans forward and says, “You really need to stop.”

Monroe grins, shaking her head. “Can’t stop, won’t stop, Bellamy.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes.

Octavia finds she copies her brother. “I’m standing _right here._ ”

Lincoln crosses his arms against his chest, smiling. Looking at Monroe, he asks innocently, “What things has she seen?”

Octavia crosses her arms over her chest and rolls her neck. “Stop.”

Bellamy leans backward in his chair to look up at Lincoln. “Please.”

“Yes, please,” Jasper deadpans. His voice drips with acid. If he could, he’d make their skin begin to fizzle and pop with the mere tone of his voice. Looking up at him, she finds his gaze is hard and unamused as he gazes at them from a few rows in front. “Stop.”

Monty stiffens, lowering his head. Octavia reaches out and wraps her fingers to the curve of his shoulder, squeezing tightly.

Someone clears their throat. When Octavia looks out at the gathering, she finds most of the seats are full. There’s a few empty ones here and there, and she finds herself curious as to why the people of the Ark can’t move one over. 

Looking over the room, she realises it’s not everyone from Camp Jaha. Despite how many heads she can count, requiring all of her friends’ fingers to keep a tally of the number of people in the room, it still feels too big. She knows some of their people linger outside. These are the people interested in facing the ghosts of Mount Weather.

Abby stands before them. Hands clasped in front of her, she looks over the room, which begins to quieten. “I’ll keep this brief,” she says. “As most of you know, the rumours are true. We intend to go into the mountain.”

There’s a noise, a shuffle of feet. Octavia thinks she can hear the Ark groan in response. The Guard behind her, Sergeant Miller and Cynthia, stand with their hands clasped in front of them. Other Guard officers must be patrolling the Ark, keeping the rest of the camp company.

“We need supplies,” she says. Her entire posture stiffens, changing as though she needs to brace herself for the words she’s rehearsed over and over. “The mountain has medicines, clothes, food, and other resources we need. I understand that it’s an uncomfortable thought, given the circumstances. I don’t wish to trivialise the pain that any of you have experienced.”

Kane steps forward. “Which is why we’ll be taking a small party into the mountain to gather what we need.” Abby looks to him, nodding, before looking down to the ground. “We’ve thought this over. We’ve tried to find other alternatives. But they have supplies we cannot grow or find elsewhere. Most of you know that, as we’ve come to you. And those we haven’t approached, I apologise. If you know a solution, please let us know. We want to include you in every step we take.”

“Only a select few of you will be a part of this party,” Abby says. “Your exclusion or inclusion is of no testament of your worth to Camp Jaha. If this proves successful, if the resources we bring back to camp prove to be useful, we’ll consider smaller parties to go to the mountain to retrieve more.”

“But we want to ensure it’s what the rest of the camp wants,” Kane says. “I understand that this initial trip may cause you to feel panic, perhaps even discomfort. Consider this a test run. If what we find is of use to you, to your specialty, to what you believe this camp needs, we’ll organise more trips to the mountain to slowly bring us what will only help us survive.”

A man from the other side of the room, seated third row from the front, leans forward in his seat, raising his hand into the air briefly. It’s enough to pull Abby and Kane’s gazes to him. His hair is short cropped and bright red, his broad shoulders unfamiliar to her. “And who’s to say there won’t be Grounders there?”

“Nothing, unfortunately,” Abby says, expression falling. Octavia thinks it’s one of empathy, or maybe pity. “That’s a risk we take, which is why we intend to take only a small party. The camp will remain guarded, as it was when we left for the Grounder village with Echo.”

There’s a soft murmur of a few people, but it echoes loudly in her ears. _Echo._ Octavia doesn’t need anyone to explain to her Abby’s choice of naming the Grounder had been strategic.

Kane pulls his hands apart, gesturing with them. “The alliance is still in place. We don’t wish for it to break, nor do they.”

A woman a few rows in front of where she stands raises her hand. Thick, blonde hair cascades down her back in bouncing and perfect curls. “Do you have confirmation on that? Did that Grounder tell you that?”

A man standing to the side of the room, leaning against the wall nearest to the door, looks in her direction. She stiffens, expression pinching into a sharp scowl, before she realises it’s Lincoln he looks at. Taking a step closer toward him, she glares at him before his eyes seem to move back to Kane.

“Yes. Yes, she did.” Kane looks to Abby, who nods. “And I have her word she won’t be a threat to us now or in the distant future.”

Octavia thinks to raise her hand. Shifting, she calls out, “Who’s going? How do you choose people?”

The entire room seems to look at her. 

Tilting her head up, she stands taller. Arms remaining crossed against her chest, she keeps her gaze on Abby and Kane.

She watches Kane look her over before his gaze settles on Bellamy. “See Bellamy Blake. State what you can contribute to the party.”  

Abby folds her hands together, looking around the room while Kane seems focused on Bellamy. “We need people who know their way around technology, foods, drinks, medicines, even textiles. Think of what you knew from the Ark.”

“Even if it’s knowing your way around it,” Bellamy says. The entire room seems to shift to his voice, looking at him. Octavia watches the back of his head, seeing how he doesn’t cower. “We need people who were inside of that mountain, too. But only if you’re ready.”

Jasper raises his hand. Letting it slap against his leg, he asks, “What about the people inside of it?” Standing on the tips of her toes, she notices how his leg bounces. 

Kane looks confused.

“There’s bodies in there,” Jasper says, voice growing louder. Panicked. “They’re not going to just up and _leave_.”

“We’ll burn them.” Abby looks to Jasper, her gaze unwavering on him. Octavia thinks Jasper cowers a little beneath a gaze that doesn’t seem intent to look away at the mere sight of him. “And we’ll have a burial for those who had been innocent. For those who had helped us.”

“We’ll ensure to have a list of names, too,” Kane says. “If anyone can assist us with that, you’re more than welcome to see me when you’re ready.”

There’s a low murmuring in the room. Gina tiptoes across the back wall, footsteps soft as she passes by Bellamy. Her hand lingers on his shoulder before she sits on the seat in front of him.

Kane looks to Abby. “We’ll give them a proper burial.”

Looking up at the movement of Jasper, she can see how his gaze seems to sweep over them. His old friends. The people he’s successfully pushed away. Octavia feels something inside of her fold when she notices his eyes are red. He lowers his head, wrapping his arms tightly around himself.

Kane’s gaze sweeps over them. His voice softens when he says, “They deserve that much.”

Octavia looks to Bellamy, watching him carefully as his head ducks, and finds Raven’s looking at him, too.

“We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Kane continues. “I understand it’s short notice, but we need to act quickly.”

“Anyone who is injured and hasn’t hasn’t received medical clearance will be encouraged _not_ to come along,” Abby smiles. There’s a low chuckle, like it’s a joke. Octavia finds she only stiffens at the mere reminder of a drill. “Two weeks recovery isn’t enough for some of you, I’m afraid.”

“See Bellamy Blake or myself. We’ll discuss, and let you know before nightfall.” Kane nods his head.

People begin to lift themselves out of their chairs. Octavia finds herself panicking, wondering who will approach her brother, steal him away from her before she has a chance to scoop him up and take him elsewhere.

Kane’s voice is loud when he calls out, “Lincoln, I’d like to see you later.”

Looking to Lincoln, she sees him nod. The people in attendance begin to stand, clump together in their groups, walk to the exit or to the very front of the room. Octavia remains where she stands, along with her friends who stay seated.

She moves toward the back of Bellamy’s chair, the toe of her boot hitting the back of his chair leg hard. “I want to come.”

Bellamy turns in his chair and looks up at her. “O —”

“Come on, Bell. You know I can do this.”

He looks at her, then past her.

She looks over at Lincoln. 

He seems to grow smaller. Hands slipping into the pockets of his jeans, he shakes his head. He looks at Bellamy when he says, “I’m not coming.”

“Why?” Octavia steps into his eye line. Her voice quietens when she says, “You can do this.”

He shakes his head, looking at her. “I don’t feel comfortable, Octavia.”

“Why? You’re better. Abby told me you were better.”

“I don’t trust myself.”

Reaching out, she grabs his hand. Threading her fingers through the spaces of his, she grips it as hard as she can. “But I trust you.”

His smile is small. Octavia finds herself wilting, panic blossoming inside of her. Looking over her shoulder at Bellamy, she peers up at Lincoln once more, wondering if this is what Abby had been speaking of. Is this how Bellamy’s meant to care for him? Pushing him away from what he’d otherwise take to?

Lincoln squeezes her hand, but she finds it isn’t comforting enough. The hand inside of her chest only seems to squeeze her heart tighter. Feeling a hand brush against her back, she knows it’s Bellamy reaching out to comfort her. “And I wish it were enough. I need to be here, with my people.”

Octavia finds her vision blurs as she looks at him with a sad smile.

“It’s not like you’ll be alone,” Gina says. Octavia steps away from Lincoln, hand still in his, turning her body to look at their small audience. Gina’s thrown her arm over her chair, looking at Lincoln with warmth in her gaze. “Ever played Old Maid?”

Lincoln smiles. “What’s that?”

“Oh, boy,” she smiles. 

Raven rolls her eyes. “You’re in for it.”

Lincoln’s hand is on her back. Fingers nudging the small of it, she looks up at him and finds he's gazing down at her. Gently, he urges, “You go, Octavia.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “My place is with you.”

Following where Lincoln’s gaze shifts to, she looks at Bellamy. With his arm hanging over the back of his chair, he shrugs his shoulder. “It’s your call, O.”

She looks at her brother, feeling her expression crumble. It’s a choice she doesn’t wish to make. Unable to split herself in two, she can’t shadow Bellamy when she leaves Lincoln in the dust. But she can’t shadow Lincoln if she leaves Bellamy to walk into the lion’s den once more. He’s not invincible, despite how he postures himself to be. He’s not Heracles, despite them both wishing he was.

Turning to Lincoln, she shifts on the balls of her feet. Her voice breaks when she whispers, “I just got you back.”

Lincoln smiles, letting his gaze duck. “And I’ll be here when you return.”

Inhaling deeply, Octavia shakes her head. “No,” she says. Fingers gripping his tightly, she watches him raise his head to look at her. There’s a furrow to his brow before he understands. “Bell,” she says, looking at Bellamy. He looks up at her, no longer gazing at the ground. “I’ll be on the next one. I need to stay here.”

He nods. “Okay.”

She hadn’t expected a fight. _Lead the way_ , he’d once said, and she supposes he’s trusting her to be his red string, guiding him through a labyrinth she doubts even her big brother knows how to navigate.

“Come by my workstation,” Raven says. Lifting her hand, she points between her and Lincoln. “I’ve got something for you to use to keep an eye on this one.” She points toward Bellamy, seeing him roll his eyes. He shifts, beginning to stand, as Raven lets her arm swing over the back of her chair.

Gina stands, glancing at Bellamy as he steps out of the row. She looks to Lincoln and Octavia, and smiles warmly. “Two on one,” she says. She pats Bellamy on the back, standing beside him. “I hope you’re ready to get your asses handed to you.”


	12. Raven IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _she can’t fix this._ or the one where raven realises they're all made out of broken pieces of themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this instalment took a bit partly due to me wanting it to be absolutely perfect (it's pretty important for the story and involves so many people, so i let my anxiety sort of talk me out of posting for a long while!) and also due to needing to think on it and plot a little of it out for what's to come. this one is a bit of a long one, but i couldn't cut it or tell half of it in someone else's pov as i think it's pretty important raven's the one we experience it through. with that all sorted, i do hope you like it!
> 
> a warning: references to ptsd. 
> 
> as usual, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thank you so much for reading and your kind comments here and on tumblr! i'm really thrilled you're enjoying this story. ♥

Sometimes Raven’s gleeful her hands still work. Balling them into fists, she looks down at them, and taps Gina on the hip before trying to slink away from any retaliation.

“You should teach him the hand clapping game,” Raven says. Slowing down to almost a halt in the corridor, Raven holds her hand up for Gina to hit. After she does so, she almost stumbles into her on purpose, ducking her head as she grins.

“I don’t think Lincoln would appreciate the slide hand clapping game, Raven,” Gina says kindly. Her smile makes Raven think otherwise. Plant a seed in the garden of Gina and she nurtures herself, growing a little weed before it takes root and launches itself into a tree so thick not even a Raven Reyes limited edition bomb could blow it to smithereens.

She’ll try her best, but even she knows when to admit defeat. Trying to destroy Gina Martin’s palace of ideas and stubbornness is something she’d rather admire and grow envious of than uproot.

Raven bumps into her side a little clumsily, but her friend thinks nothing of it. From the corner of her eye, she can see her hand reach out, as if to steady her, but upon realising she doesn’t need it, withdraws her hand and lets her arm swing by her side.

“You’ll be surprised by what Lincoln will do,” Raven shrugs. There’s a warmth to her voice that she likes the sound of. Though he’s still practically a stranger to her, Lincoln’s a presence she finds fixes things in the Ark better than a mechanic or engineer ever could achieve. “He’s a cool guy.”

It’s like that’s all Gina needs. Her pursed lips smooth out into a smile as her head tilts in thought. She steps into her when she almost walks into a discarded chair, sitting on its back with its legs pointing out toward them.

The corridor to her workstation has begun to become cluttered with junk. Tables missing a leg, chairs falling apart on the seat and back, random cushions, pieces of bed frames, even tools can be found here and there on the ground. It’s a bit of a junkyard, and Raven likes it. She knows she’ll miss the mess when Sinclair or Sophie decide it’s time for a hallway sale and sacrifice half of their shit to one of the gods Bellamy fancies with a bonfire.

“Then I’ll try and teach him a few of my bar games,” Gina smiles. She takes a quicker step to get in front of her, pushing the door to her workstation open. She stands against it, leaving it open. With a wave of her hand, Raven rolls her eyes and tries to walk in as though she’s a dainty little princess.

“I’m almost tempted to ask you put off teaching him until I’m there to see it,” she says. She turns to walk backwards into her workstation, stumbling slightly over her feet as she finds she still hasn’t developed eyes in the back of her head. “I want to see that cute little wrinkle of confusion —”

Turning around, her smile falls once she spots Wick sitting at her workbench. He lifts himself up from his slouch once he sees her, expression brightening with hope.

From the corner of her eye, she can see Gina frown. “What’s —” Turning her head, she spots Wick. “Oh,” she breathes quietly. 

Raven may bow her head and look at the pointy toes of Gina’s boots, but she knows her friend’s looking at her. She imagines her in her head, glancing between her and Wick. If she raises her eyes to see her hands, she’ll see Gina’s fingers curl into her palms. 

Lifting her gaze, Raven gives her the smallest of nods. A smile to match her uncertainty, she knows Gina doesn’t buy she’s comfortable with being left alone with Wick. 

Honestly, Raven hardly buys it herself.

Gina knows better than most on the Ark. With the arch of her brow, she silently communicates her reminder of what Raven’s confided in her. She confirms it with her hand pressing lightly on the small of her back, right where her skin is scarred and puckered.

“I’m going to go,” Gina says, taking a few steps back toward the door. Raven glances over her shoulder at her, a part of her hoping she’ll be able to leave with her. Gina reaches out to brush her hand against Raven’s arm for good measure. “I’ll see you later, okay? Hopefully before you go.”

Raven watches her leave. Keeping the door open, she moves into her workstation and keeps her head bowed. Maybe if she doesn’t look at him, he’ll disappear. Evaporate in the sun. Somehow get the hint and whoosh out of her workstation like he’s a speckle of dust held at the whims of the wind.

Feeling Wick’s eyes on her, she hears the stool shift beneath his weight. He remains perched there, legs bent, arm on the bench as he observes her. “We need to talk.”

Her workstation has never felt this stuffy.

She tries to keep her sigh in, but fails. Turning her back to him, she pulls her jacket free of her arms and folds it. “No,” she says, attempting to make the edges of her sleeves meet evenly. She’s never cared for a neatly folded jacket, but she keeps herself occupied by pretending she does. Wick won’t know any better. He hardly knows this is her favourite jacket. Red and lumpy, it keeps her warm just as it had kept her company when the world had seemed so bleak. “We don’t.”

“Yeah,” he says, moving. His feet hit the floor and he begins to move, two tentative yet long and confident strides toward her direction. From the corner of her eye, she can see his expression, and she wishes the sun would filter in and block it from her. “We do.”

Raven remains quiet.

“Okay, I’ll just —“ He uses his hands to gesture his frustration. Raven keeps her eyes on him, gaze hard and jaw clenched. Steeling herself for battle, her hip begins to ache at the weight she places on her foot. “Do you really think this is a good idea? You going out to this place? You should be looking after yourself, Raven. You’re not needed —”

“Jealous you didn’t make the final cut, Wick?” She crosses her arms against her chest, brow arching. He seems to squirm just a little beneath her gaze before he steels himself and grows taller. Becoming an overbearing shadow she doesn’t need in her workstation, it no longer feels safe and homey inside.

He doesn’t look impressed. Once, the agitated furrow of his brow had been something she liked to put there. Stitching it there with her shoddy needlework, she’d always been proud of crawling beneath his skin. Now that she’s been under it, she doesn’t like the texture of it anymore. “You know I don’t care whether or not I make it on some list Bellamy Blake’s writing up. I care about you.”

Raven rolls her eyes.

His arms unfold, swinging by his sides like they’re useless and floppy wings. Maybe made of wax. Raven’s been meaning to see how it melts beneath a candle, just so she can visualise the story Octavia’s told her of a man who had flown too close to the sun. “It’s obvious you’ve been avoiding me,” he says, voice sounding a little hard.

She tries her best not to roll her eyes. Shifting on her leg, she thinks to move, but remains where she is by her set of drawers. If she moves, he’ll follow, and Raven isn’t intent on a game of cat and mouse. Sarcastically, she quips, “Wonder why.”

“You kissed me,” he says, emphasising it with a raise of his brows. “It wasn’t the other way around. Even though I kissed you back — You kissed me. And now you’re icing me out.”

Balling her hands into fists, she looks away from him. “That was a mistake.”

“Kissing me or freezing me out?”

Raven doesn’t need to think. But she does. Giving herself time to mull it over, she knows she gives him hope and the permission to misread her.

Looking at him, she says, “Kissing you.”

He takes a step back as though she’s hit him. Looking at her with disbelief, he lowers his gaze, brows furrowing. Arms crossing against his chest again, she finds that her words are as sharp as a Grounder’s spear. She wonders if it’s catapulted him into a tree as it had Jasper Jordan. “You don’t really believe that.”

Feeling as though he’s shoved her in the chest, she frowns. “Now you’re telling me what I believe?”

“Why are you being so hot and cold?’

She deadpans, “I’m sure I’ve been really consistent as of late.” Shifting the weight to her good hip, Raven winces. Sucking in a breath, she ignores how pain ebbs and remains on her left hipbone. Her leg doesn’t feel any better, but she thinks she’s alleviated the pressure by placing it all on her right. “I thought you engineers knew how shit was built?”

He ignores her. Taking a step toward her, he keeps his arms crossed. Petulantly, she feels like launching at him and pulling them apart to leave him as vulnerable as she had been. Bare back and his words as sharp as a blade, he’d cut her almost a thousand times with his words once upon a time. 

Eventually, he says, “You shouldn’t go.”

“You’re not my keeper.” The guilt she felt begin to wire itself inside of her suddenly short fuses. This is why she’s been avoiding him. Hobbling into the other corridors, lingering in the bar, waiting around to walk Bellamy through a corridor until he has to eventually leave her — _this_ is why she’s been avoiding someone who used to be her friend.

She can’t fix this.

The guilt inside of her powers out, leaving her feeling hollow. Throwing a hard look his way, she speaks firmly, “I’m going.”

He sighs out, like he’s dealing with a child. It’s the way her mother used to talk to her. The way Nygel used to speak to her when she was losing patience with a child who knew no better than the scenarios she’d made up in her head. “You know it’s a mistake.”

Taking a step toward him, her voice grows louder, “They believe in me. Octavia, Monty, Abby, Lincoln, Bellamy —”

He shakes his head, tilting it up slightly. He looks mirthlessly amused. “You’re trusting the judgement of Bellamy Blake?”

“Yeah, I am,” she says, frowning. Hands balling into fists, she tries to embed her blunt nails into her palms to keep her from fixing her arms into weapons. An angry tightness forms in her chest and pushes itself into her throat. “Feel free to put the ruler away, Wick. This isn’t a dick measuring contest.”

Wick opens his mouth to speak. It takes her a moment to notice his eyes have narrowed and moved away from her to look at the door.

Glancing over her shoulder, she sees Bellamy stepping through the threshold, looking between them with a furrow to his brow. She wouldn’t call it curiousity. Maybe suspicion. Uncertainty. He’s not as stupid as her; she thinks to close her eyes and reprimand herself for forgetting to close the damn door.

Looking to her, he says, “We’re leaving.” He lingers by the door, eyes on her, though she notes how they flicker toward Wick.

She doesn’t look at Wick. She can already imagine his posture is stiff. Shoulders held back, jaw tense, eyes as sharp as the dull blades he doesn’t know how to fix into weapons.

Looking back at Wick, she lets her gaze travel up and down him quickly. Lips pinched into an unimpressed line, she looks him in the eye and finds he’s gazing at her, head slightly bowed and a look she doesn’t want to commit to memory or even analyse on his face. 

“I forgot Lincoln has my bag.” Grabbing her jacket from the top of the drawer, she throws it over her shoulder and begins to move. The pressure of her pivoting on her foot quickly causes her to wince, back thankfully to Wick.

Bellamy doesn’t move from his place by the door. She walks out with her head held high and a hobble in her step as she pushes herself to move as though she doesn’t feel a sharp bolt burn its way up her left leg and to her hip.

Taking a few more angry strides, she stops and winces. Biting her bottom lip, she grips the cushiony fabric of her jacket between her fingers.

He’s behind her. Bellamy doesn’t reach out to touch her. “You two fighting?”

She remains quiet. Imagining how to move her feet, she pictures herself almost running. Pounding against the metallic floor of the Ark, she envisions her strides to be powerful — and eager to run away.

Beginning to walk, her pace is slower and her steps more uneven. She tilts more to the right than the left. He falls into step easily beside her. “I don’t care.”

 _Good_ , she thinks. Focusing on her footsteps, she tries to remove her attention away from the lightning strike of pain through her leg. Bellamy remains beside her, pace more casual than normal, and she catches him glancing over at her a few times. Each time, he says nothing.

Her feet get ahead of her head when she turns a corner. Almost stumbling into the wall, she feels his hand on the small of her back.

“Slow down, Raven.” He removes it once she slows down, almost stopping. Taking a deep breath in to centre herself, she begins to walk again. There’s a puff of air, and she looks at him from the corner of her eye. There’s a quirk to his lip and his entire face appears younger. Amusedly, he quips, “I can barely keep up.”

She wants to roll her eyes or give him a pointed look for such a lame joke, but she exhales through her nose again. Licking her lips, she releases her jacket, leaving it thrown over her shoulder. She slows down and tries to move at a pace and with a strength that’ll see Zeus vacate the left side of her body. 

Glancing up at him, she notes how there’s a slight darkness beneath his eyes. There’s a redness to them, too, but she doubts he’s been crying. “Did you sleep?”

Now it’s his turn to remain quiet.

She thinks to leave him alone, but Raven can never help but poke him. She doesn't lift her hand to do so now, even though the sight of his shoulder and him wearing a jacket that seems familiar in its dark filth tempts her. “You should try and learn to sleep. I hear it’s a good habit to have.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs. He keeps his gaze ahead of them while she lets hers linger on him. There’s freckles all over his cheeks. She’d touched them once, felt the warmth of them press against her fingers and frighten her. “I’ll sleep when this is all over,” he says with a nod toward the end of their corridor.

Her face breaks out into a wide and bright smile at the sight of their friends.

“We’ve been waiting forever for you, man,” Miller calls out, lifting his gaze from his shoes. Leaning against the wall, he’s dressed in his Guard uniform with a deep red beanie covering most of his hair. It sits a little lopsided on his head. 

Monroe elbows him, hard enough for him to frown and rub at his arm. Dressed like a warrior, she wears a jacket that’s clean and a deep mossy green. Her mohawk is neat and tidy; Raven can only assume Harper, standing beside her, had fixed her hair for her.

“He’s slow,” Raven says, throwing her thumb in Bellamy’s direction. She knows he rolls his eyes. “I kept trying to make him race me, but seems like this tortoise is way too slow for this hare.”

Octavia remains leaning against Lincoln. Looking at Bellamy fondly, she smiles, “Sounds about right.”

“Here,” Lincoln says, leaning toward her. Octavia steps out of his embrace so he can pull a backpack from his shoulder. Raven takes it from him, holding the strap between her fingers. It’s light, but the weightlessness to the backpack isn’t a mockery of her leg. It’s heavy, but manageable; there’s a weight belonging to a few of the radios and a notebook in there somewhere, lodged and folded between all the clothes.

Sliding her arms through the straps, Raven nods toward him. “Thank you,” she says.

“We need to stop blocking the corridor,” Bellamy says. He cocks his head toward the left, an unsubtle gesture for them to move. Miller pushes himself off the wall, hands sliding into his pockets, as he leads the pack, Monty almost on his heels as Monroe and Harper walk side by side.

Octavia throws her arm around Lincoln’s waist and uses it to pull him to follow. Looking over her shoulder, she almost twists around to walk backward to face them as Raven finds herself and Bellamy bringing up the rear.

“You’ll radio every five minutes, got it?”

Peering up at Bellamy, Raven finds he tries his best not to appear amused. “O, I’m going to be fine.”

“Promise me.”

Bellamy looks at Octavia. There’s a soft and warm smile on his lips as he repeats, “Promise.”

Pleased, she spins back around and steps into Lincoln. They remain quiet as they walk along the main corridor of the Ark and out its opened doors.

Kane waits near the gate. Wearing his Guard uniform and a backpack, he nods toward them, but doesn’t step away from Abby. Raven tries not to watch their body language, but she sees how they fold into one another. Fixing the holes in themselves. Ryan and Cynthia stand near them, but seem clustered together, unbothered by their Chancellor and the leader of their party.

Gina runs over toward them. She brushes against Bellamy’s side, causing them to stop in their approach to the gates. “Good luck,” she says, looking at the two of them. “Bring back some goddamn booze.”

Raven lifts her hand to press it to her temple, saluting her. “Will do, Captain.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes.

Gina walks with them as they join the small group by the gate, waiting impatiently for Kane to step over and take charge. Raven looks up at the sky and finds the sun peering down upon them. Slightly hot on her back, she remembers her jacket’s slung over her shoulders. Pulling at the straps of her backpack to bring it around to her front, she misses how Bellamy stiffens beside her.

“The party that pilfers,” Jasper spits. He approaches them with a drunk swag to his step. His eyes appear bloodshot, or maybe that’s just how Raven thinks his soul to look these days. The expression he wears is one of disgust. 

Sparing a glance at the group, she notices how Monty bows his head. Attempting to appear smaller, she observes how Miller glances at him for only a moment before he seems to grow larger and brighter. 

Miller shrugs his shoulders, looking at his friends. “The Pilfer Party.” He grins, nodding. “Now I like the sound of that.” 

Kane looks up from where he’s speaking quietly to Abby. Raven’s only stuffed half of her jacket in her bag when she sees Jasper look her over with a sharpness to his gaze. Opening his mouth, he doesn’t speak until his eyes settle on Bellamy.

“It’s your fault, you know.”

Monty steps forward. “Leave him alone, Jasper,” he says, hand held out in a gesture of peace. Jasper looks down at it, expression pinched in disgust. The way it twists his face makes him appear ugly and strange to Raven.

Looking down at his own hand, Monty lowers it. Jasper rolls his eyes. “It’s just like you. Isn’t it? Always a follower. Never thinking for yourself.”

Before she can even move her good foot, Miller steps in quickly. He crowds him, almost nose to nose with Jasper. “Back off, Jordan.”

Leaning backward as though the mere force of Miller’s unbalanced him, Jasper takes a few steps backward. Looking them over as he keeps walking backward, he lifts his hand to his temple and salutes them. “Captain,” he says, looking at Bellamy. Turning on his foot, he marches away.

“I should …” Monty lifts his hand but lets his arm hang by his side. Sighing, the confidence that had held him high and steered his strides through the corridor disappears.

Miller claps him on the shoulder. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “He needs to cool off. So do we.”

“Let’s get moving,” Bellamy says, voice sounding slightly more rougher than it should. 

He steps away from her, walking toward Kane. Raven looks to Gina and reaches out to hug her. Feeling her arms wrap around her, she hears Gina murmur, “Be careful, Reyes.”

*

The thing about being careful is that it’s easier to embrace it when you’ve got two good feet. That's Raven's opinion, anyway. She knows Gina would disagree, which is why she’d kept quiet when her friend had embraced her and wished her good luck hours ago.

The journey was meant to be easy. It’s supposed to be as easy as she recalls walking through the woods to be. But Raven’s hip burns, her legs are slow and heavy, and her brace digs into the thick layer of her jeans like the fabric is made out of silk webbing. 

She remains at the back of the pack, disengaged from the rest of the supposed ‘Pilfer Party.’ It’s a stupid name Miller’s latched onto, and despite her efforts to grill him on his poor choice of name from the rear, Raven’s given up on trying to be involved.

Keeping her eyes on Bellamy’s broad back, she pushes herself. Her guarded expression has broken into one of pain, eyebrows pinched and lips parted as her throat burns. Despite having a bottle of water in her backpack, she refuses to pull it forward and open it. Let her lungs burn. Let her feet feel like they’re on fire. The uneven ground under her boots is the best and worst punishment she’s been able to give herself.

Feeling a hand on her elbow, Raven startles when she looks up to see Monty at her side.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly.

Swallowing thickly, Raven nods. Eyes closing, she feels her feet slow down as though they’re not a part of her. Picking them up, she places too much weight down on her boot. “I’ll be fine when we get there.”

“It’s a bit of a walk, Raven,” he continues, quietly. “It’s okay to ask for help.”

“I’m fine, Green. Cross my heart.”

When she looks away from him to focus on that familiar back, Bellamy’s looking at her from over his shoulder. Radio near his mouth, she hears him tell Octavia he needs to leave. And he’ll tell her about the leaves later. Raven would find amusement in the impression she’s left on Octavia if she wasn’t trying to fight the pain in her hip and the weight of her brace.

Only a few hours spent on the uneven ground to the mountain and Raven’s so close to admitting defeat. Though it’s not in her vocabulary, she’s beginning to learn it as she had Earth Skills. Begrudgingly, and with slight protest.

Bellamy clips the radio onto his belt and slows to a halt. Miller walks off without him, side by side with Monroe as they nudge one another with their elbows. 

“Go away, Bellamy,” she says, annoyed. He falls into step beside her, Monty disappearing to appear on the other side of her.

Bellamy’s hand is so close to her arm. He’s as thick as the canopy above them, a shadow that’s meant to cool her when it warms her. Keeping her gaze on Miller’s back, she finds that it’s thinner, less familiar to her in her quick study of it.

Despite wanting to blow him away like a leaf, Bellamy remains beside her. The back of his hand brushes against her shoulder. “How much pain are you in?”

“On the Richter scale? Nine.”

His brows furrow together. She smiles at how confused he looks. “That makes no sense to me.”

She rolls her eyes and hits his arm gently. “Figures.” Pulling her leg hard, she tries to ignore how she almost stumbles.

“Stop,” he says, hand wrapping around her elbow gently.

Despite her own wishes, she stops. The pain seems to travel up her leg and settle in her hip, swelling there with a sharp jolt. Raven swallows and tries to keep her expression schooled, but she knows he’s seen the wince and the way she holds her hand to her hip.

“Monty,” he says, over her head. Raven thinks to stand taller to block his vision of Monty, but she knows she’s too short to accomplish such a petty task. Looking at Bellamy from the corner of her eye, he’s slipping his backpack off his arms. “Think you can take this?”

“Sure,” Monty says, frowning. Reaching out to take his empty backpack, Monty cradles it to his chest. 

Looking at Bellamy, she spies the determined furrow to his brows. It’s like he’s waiting for her to stop looking at Monty and the backpack before he even thinks speak. “You’re not walking anymore, Raven.”

She frowns. Standing taller, she looks him in the eye, gaze sharp and pointed. “Says who?”

Arching his brow, he seems to crowd her. Attitude, shadow, whatever it is that’s motivated him to come to the back of the pack and stand with her instead of being at the front as a leader, she finds herself suffocating in his presence. “Do you want to keep walking?”

She remains quiet.

If she keeps walking, she’ll lag even further behind. Having overestimated her capacity to travel from Camp Jaha to Mountain of Terror, she’d thought it was easier the first time. But Raven’s forgotten how many stops they’d taken, how many detours and threats they’d received. She forgets how they’d camped before they’d even gotten to the mountain, and how being with Wick had made it easy, even with the tension between them.

His stupid atom jokes got her through the damn walk.

She glances down, swallowing a little too thickly and loudly.

“Thought so.” He glances toward where their party is, still walking at the easy pace Kane had established hours ago. None of them seem to notice three of them linger behind. Raven doubts they care. 

She rolls her eyes. Injecting as much disdain in her tone, she asks, “Are you going to carry me?”

“No. You’re going to carry yourself.”

She arches her brow in confusion, her purposefully displeased expression cracking.

“I’m just going to help you, because you’re too stupid to ask.” He moves in front of her, back to her. She finds that the broad back she’d taken solace in is no longer a source of comfort to her, but something that’s softly threatening. The way he’s shaped it makes it seem like he’d constructed it to have his eyes at the back of his head, like that lady with the snakes for hair in his stories. 

Lowering himself to a squat, he looks at her over his shoulder expectantly.

She opens her mouth to defend herself, but once she realises he’s not going to stand up and face her again, she finds he’s knocked her off her legs. It isn’t difficult. She’s not particularly stable on those these days. “What are you doing, Bellamy? I’m not —” She glances at Monty, who gestures with a small sweep of his hands for her to look back at Bellamy. “You don’t have to do this. I’m _fine._ ”

“You either do this or I _will_ carry you.”

“Miller will laugh,” Monty says. She looks at him and sees him shrug. Narrowing her eyes, he doesn’t so much as fumble as he joins Bellamy in his crusade. “You know he will.”

“I’ll rip out his tongue before he even _thinks_ to,” she says easily. Stepping forward, she curls her fingers into Bellamy’s shoulders. Quietly, she reminds him, “I have my backpack on.”

Bellamy ignores her. Looking over to Monty once more, she finds he shrugs. Peering down at the top of Bellamy’s thick mop of hair, she moves her legs, watching him reach out to wrap his hands around her thighs. His touch is gentle but firm.

Monty’s hand is on the small of her back as she rests her weight against Bellamy. Keeping her head away from his and arms loose around his neck, when he begins to rise, she tightens her hold and presses her cheek to the side of his head.

“You okay?”

Instead of answering him, she hums and nods her head quickly. From the corner of her eye, she tries to not take note of Monty. But she finds that his lack of reaction to how they must look draws her to face him.

Bellamy’s hands move on her legs. Shifting her on his back, he begins to walk. Steps slow, she wonders if it’s for himself, learning her weight, or if it’s because of her hip. She can still feel a slight jolt in it from the funny angle she’s holding herself, but she sighs in relief at the lack of weight and pain shooting up her leg and embedding itself into her very marrow.

She thinks to laugh when he lowers himself to avoid brushing his head against a low hanging branch.

Settling against him, she lets her cheek rest against his head. Arms wrapping comfortably around his neck, she taps her fingers against his collarbone impatiently.

Quietly, he says, “Don’t choke me.”

“Making no promises.”

She wonders if this is how Octavia feels whenever she embraces her brother. Safe.

*

Being on Bellamy’s back isn’t so bad. Seeing the world from his height is kind of cool. She lets her fingers trace along the fabric of his shirt, dipping beneath the edge of his collar. Tracing the base of his neck, she can feel him swallow and his pulse pound in his throat.

She likes it.

At the head of the group with Monty lingering in the peripherals, she’s privy to the private conversations between Kane and his right hand man. He looks up at her with a slight arch to his brow, but says nothing of her being perched on Bellamy’s back. Cynthia seems to get a kick out of it, and Raven decides, then and there, she likes members of the Guard who know how to smile.

“Lincoln told me the Reapers may be in the cave,” Kane says. The mountain’s right there, in arm’s reach; she thinks to extend hers to see if she can touch it, considering she’s so close to the heavens on Bellamy’s back. The hill is thick with wildly growing grass. If it wasn’t for that ugly metallic door, she’d think it was just another steep slope they were looking up at.

Bellamy looks toward the mountain and sighs. It shakes the earth. It kind of shakes her, too. “We need to split up.”

“That we do,” Kane nods. He glances quickly at her before focusing on Bellamy, as if incapable of not acknowledging the baggage he carries on his back. “Will you be okay with the plan?”

“I’ve gone in through this way before,” Bellamy says, voice an exasperated sigh. She thinks he tenses beneath her, but with her fingers on his collarbone, something within him relaxes. His fingers on her good leg grip it hard then soften. “No one else should lead them but me.”

“We’ll go inside and unlock the door,” Kane says. He glances toward their destination, somewhere through the thick brush and trees. Raven thinks she sees it, but, then again, she’s never seen anything from this angle before. “Check to make sure it’s completely clear.”

Raven purses her lips before she asks, “Do you really think the Reapers would linger?” Kane looks at her, and she shifts against Bellamy’s back, feeling his fingers dig into her leg as though he’s afraid she intends to slide off. Moving a hand to his hair, she grips it hard by his ear before she lets her fingers glide over the shell and return to his collarbone. Her brows furrow as she asks Kane, “Are they that lucid?”

“Lincoln says so,” Kane says. “It’s best to be careful.”

“Who’s going with him?” She taps Bellamy’s cheek blindly, finding she pokes his nose. Kane looks amused; it’s not a bad expression, the smile breaking the stone worry of his face.

Glancing toward their small party, who are looking up at the mountain like it’s a horrific wonder for them to gaze upon, he looks back at her. “Miller and Monroe.”

“The best kind of people to have,” Raven says. Nodding, something inside of her settles. Nerves, she thinks. Those pesky things she’s too good to have. “I’ll open the door with Monty.”

“That sounds okay with me,” Monty pipes up. “I’m bad with locks.”

Raven smiles and shakes her head.

Kane nods to Bellamy. “Stay on the radio. Any trouble, we’ll come get you. Shoot first, don’t try and capture if you run into a Reaper.”

“I know.” Bellamy looks over his shoulder. Tapping her on her good leg, she looks down at him, hands moving to curl around his shoulders as she shifts to peer around at him. “You going to be okay?”

“Well, it kind of sucks not to have some sort of royal carpet rolled out for me. But I’ll live.” Tapping his shoulder, she throws her thumb toward the ground. “Down, boy.”

Lowering himself, Monty assists her in sliding off Bellamy’s back. When he stands and takes a step way from her, she feels cold.

“Miller, Monroe,” Bellamy calls out. With a wave of his hand, he gestures for them to follow.

Watching his back, she feels Monty tap her shoulder. “Want to give me a piggyback ride?”

Raven smiles. Looping her arm through his, she winces when she takes a step. “Sure, Green.”

Keeping his steps small and slow, they follow Kane, Cynthia, and Ryan in their approach of the mountain. Raven doesn’t like how it looks. Some of the bright, yellow flowers grow as though they’re reaching up toward the sun. Some remain trampled, a sign that a war had been here at this doorstep, that Grounders had come with their allies and had stabbed them in the back.

She wonders if there’s blood on and in the ground.

The hill is torturous to climb up, but she finds Monty’s hand in hers and the little game he begins to play with her — an Eye Spy sort of thing, even though the answer is always _green_ and _grass_ — distracts her enough from the pain in her leg and the way her breathing is more laboured than anyone else's in their little group. She’s grateful for Monty sticking by her side when they stop and she finds she bends herself over to catch her breath.

Cynthia and Ryan move toward the door with Kane. She doesn’t catch how they open it, uncaring for the key when the lock’s bound to break sooner or later with all the rust and radiation the door’s been batting away from slipping inside. It makes a loud noise, one that rattles the earth itself.

She looks at that large door and wonders what kind of monster had to have created it in the first place.

Kane walks over toward them, looking her over. Pulling herself up, she folds her arms against her chest to keep herself from bending over again. There’s a sharp pain in her good leg near the space the drill had bitten into flesh and bone.

“Go find the door,” Kane says, holding out a handgun for Monty to take. She watches Kane observe Monty; they both see it, the way Monty simply stares at it, lips parted, eyes a little wide. He doesn’t reach to accept it.

Raven wraps her fingers around the base of it and nods. Nudging Monty with her shoulder, she cocks her head to the side. “Come on,” she says, quietly. Monty begins to move after she takes a step.

Ensuring they’re side by side, that she can feel his body heat seep and burn into her arm, they step inside of the mountain’s front door.

Guiding her through the corridors, they remain in silence for some time. Looking around, she takes note of the cement walls, the coldness lingering in the walls around them. Wrapping her arms around herself, she feels the butt of the handgun hit her arm.

“Depressing place,” she comments.

Monty nods his head, remaining quiet. He doesn’t look around to memorise it like she does. Keeping his gaze straight ahead, he walks.

“Door’s down here.”

Raven nods. Giving herself a few moments to memorise this labyrinth, she looks back toward him. Seeing him tense, his steps less easy, she thinks to reach out and touch him. “You okay?”

He nods, then shakes his head. “No,” he says, voice shaking in the one syllable. Looking at her, he holds out the radio. “Can you turn on the radio? I … I need to concentrate. I don’t like being here.”

“No problem,” she nods. Taking it from him, she slides the gun into her pocket as though it’s one of her markers. “I can talk to you, if it’ll help?”

Monty nods, humming low in his throat. He takes a left, hand reaching out to brush against her hip to help her steer herself.

“Okay,” she says. Looking to the ground, she can see the dull lights reflected as bright patches of pure white on the floor. “You might find this boring —”

Monty looks over his shoulder at her, expression serious. “I won’t find anything you say boring, Raven.”

She smiles at him, staying a step behind him as he looks around the corridor. “I used to be afraid of birds. The pictures of them used to scare me. They were big and weird looking. And they flew in the sky.”

He looks at her, lips quirking slightly. “You were afraid of birds?”

She smiles. “I know, ironic.”

“Yeah,” he says. “A little.”

“I was really afraid of them. And Finn knew that. So, he went and made this metal necklace for me of a raven. I used to cry whenever he showed me a picture of a bird.” She laughs, shaking her head. Something settles in her chest that makes it difficult to move, but with how her feet follow Monty’s, it shifts inside of her, somewhat crumbling when it hadn’t before. “Something about seeing them on the page … I always liked touching things with my hands. If I couldn’t do that, learn it that way, I was always so afraid of it.”

Monty looks at her with a soft smile. She thinks he looks a little bemused, and she likes it, the way his face brightens a little in this dreary corridor. “You’re not afraid of anything, Raven.”

“As much as I want to be a badass _all_ the time, I have my faults.”

“So he made you a metal bird necklace. The raven you wear?”

“Yeah,” she says, voice soft. She reaches for her neck, remembering she’d taken it off to hang by the window in her workstation. “He made me that.”

He glances around the corridor, hand lifting almost to reach out and brush against a wall. Monty seems to think better of it. “Were you afraid of birds after?”

She shakes her head. “No. I wasn’t afraid of anything after that.”

Monty looks at her and smiles. “Thanks, Raven.” She arches her brow, looking as confused as she feels. “For making me a bird. We’re here.” She realises, then, that they've stopped walking. Standing before a giant door that looks identical to the ones she’s passed, she glances around, brows pulled together.

She’s missed an important piece of this corridor, but Raven finds she’s hardly bothered by it. Trusting Monty isn’t such a half-bad thing.

There’s a loud sound, and she realises he’s tapping on the door.

Turning to look at her, she holds out the radio for him to take. Keeping a hand on the gun in her pocket, she takes a step toward the wall to lean her shoulder against its cool surface.

Fiddling with the radio, she hears him click it on, static buzzing loudly in the corridor before it fades away. “Door’s unlocked, Bellamy.”

Almost immediately, she hears Bellamy’s gruff voice. “Coming through.”

Monty turns to look at her, then presses the radio buttons again. It crackles and pops, but before he can speak, he’s interrupted by the other radio dominating the channel.

Miller calls out, “There’s no one here!”

Monty frowns. He looks to her, then focuses on nothing as he speaks into the radio. “What do you mean? No Reapers?”

“None,” says Bellamy, voice loud and close to the radio. Raven finds her heart hammers in her chest as she steps closer to Monty.

“It’s empty,” says Miller.

Bellamy sighs, “It’s been abandoned.”

In the background, Monroe cries out, “Don’t look —”

“Fuck!”

Monty closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, stepping back to lean his back against the wall in front of her. Pressing the buttons of the radio down, he asks, “What about the containers?” Raven arches her brow at Monty. He shakes his head.

“Still full,” Bellamy says. “No one’s moving.”

 Raven opens her mouth to ask, but there’s a sound on the other end. It’s then she realises it’s a dry retch. “I’m going to be sick.”

Monroe barks, “Pull it together, Miller!”

Bellamy says, “E.T.A. two minutes if we’re walking through the right tunnel.”

Raven’s arm brushes against Monty’s. Leaning toward the radio, she presses her fingers over his and clicks the buttons. “Okay, well, we’ll be waiting with a party for you. Maybe some dinner rolls.”

“Funny, Raven.”

Looking to Monty, she smiles, trying to see his face brighten with colour. Rolling her eyes, she nudges him gently, “He thinks I was joking.”

She can see the corner of his lips quirk upward, but even she knows she’s not Jasper. Monty won’t break into a beam with her, but the way he seems to relax slightly is enough of an achievement in her books. “I don’t think they have dinner rolls here, Raven. Not anymore.”

Hearing a bang on the door, they take a few steps back. Monty clicks the radio on and says, “Opening it. Stand back.” Holding the radio out for her to take, he moves toward the door and opens it, using the strength of one of Bellamy’s gods to do so.

Standing on the other side, Bellamy pockets his radio and steps in. Monroe and Miller shadow him. Leaving the door open, Bellamy looks around the corridor like a wild animal, as though he’s expecting someone or something to be lurking in the shadows.

“I told Kane we’ll meet in the dining hall. Lets go.”

Cocking his head in the direction of the dining hall, Monroe brushes by them, walking powerfully through the corridor for such a small girl. Miller reaches out to pull Monty along, taking the radio from him as he glances around the corridor.

Bellamy looks at her and begins to move after she pushes herself off the wall. He keeps at her pace as they walk through the corridors in silence. She thinks to ask him what had been in those containers Monty had asked about, but she knows he won’t answer. There’s something about him that makes her feel panicked. Watching the way he looks around the corridor they walk through, she knows he’s been here before. She wonders what he’s searching for, if it’s someone that won’t be opening one of the doors they pass.

She hears footsteps and soft conversation when they near the assigned meeting location. It’s a corridor outside of a pair of large doors and a sign indicating it’s the eating area. Miller, Monty, and Monroe stand outside of it, clustered together. Monty appears uneasy, but with Monroe’s hand on his back, Raven thinks he’s somewhat soothed.

Kane approaches with Cynthia and Ryan from the opposite end of the corridor. Without stopping, Kane nods his head toward Bellamy and moves to open those grand dining room doors. They wall fall in, as if pulled in by some gravitational force. She’s the last to begin walking, turning into the dining hall room.

Stepping inside, Raven’s not so sure what she had expected. She can’t see over Bellamy’s tall frame, and doesn’t step on her tiptoes to see the dining hall from a vantage point. Looking above her and through the gap between him and Kane, she can see what life was like for those trapped inside of the mountain. Brightly lit with banners hanging from the ceiling, the dining hall is something the Ark’s food court should be jealous of simply for having such an incredible large and well-furnished space.

Everyone in front of her is tense. She presses a hand against the small of Bellamy’s back, but finds he doesn’t so much as budge. It’s like he purposefully stiffens and takes up the space in front of her at her prompting.

Something’s missing from it all, though. Shouldering her way through the line of men standing in front of her, she brushes by Bellamy forcibly and shoves Miller with a hard push against his side. Out of all of them, Bellamy seems to fold without any intention to continue fighting her, turning as though he’s just noticed she’s there.

She frowns. Looking out at the dining hall, she finds herself envious of the decorations of the room. There’s flowers, dead in their pots. Chairs pulled out and utensils left sitting by their plates, untouched ruined and mouldy food.

Sweeping her gaze along the floor, she taps Bellamy’s hip hard.

She hears her voice before she thinks of the words, and listens to how her exclamation echoes around her. “Where the hell are the bodies?”


	13. Lincoln I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _then place your faith in me._ or the one where lincoln may need to learn to take his own advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, i've decided to add in a new pov — lincoln! i found i couldn't quite tell his story the way i wanted to through the four existing povs, and considering he plays a pivotal role in what i've outlined, i think it's only fair he gets to have a voice himself. i hope you guys don't mind; i'm eager to test drive his voice and see how this story unfolds now that i've spiced it up a little for myself by adding our favourite grounder.
> 
> the game played and the tactics employed was inspired by how i used to cheat with friends while playing old maid.
> 
> no warnings for this, although there is (vague) reference to drug addiction.
> 
> again, thanks for reading! i'd love to know what you think of the story so far. as always, unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. ♥

“You have her, don’t you?”

Octavia narrows her eyes at him. His heart picks up just a little before he breathes in through his nose. Peering at his cards, Lincoln does his best not to look up at her, but once he does, he finds the way her expression hardly moves to be comical.

He can’t help but laugh. 

Attempting to appear innocent, he schools his mouth into a firm line. It breaks within moments as Octavia’s expression doesn’t shift; with her eyes narrowed and gaze unblinking, she stares down her nose at him. 

He laughs, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her eyes narrow even further. “I know what you’ve been doing behind my back.” Her voice is deep and gravelly, and he only smiles as she arches her brow, eyes looking him up and down. “Spending time with her. ‘Fess up, Lincoln.” She arches her brow pointedly at him. “You have the Old Maid.”

Gina taps a short nail against the side of her shot glass. Smiling at the two of them, she reaches over to push his shoulder lightly, eyes on Octavia. Her gaze doesn’t shift from him, and he thinks Gina’s laughing because of how Octavia refuses to react. 

Her hand lingers by his shoulder, and he thinks she’s contemplating shoving him again. Leaning toward Octavia, Gina quips, “That’s not a nice thing to call your rival.”

His smile remains soft and small, and only seems to make Octavia almost narrows her eyes until they’re closed. He tries not to laugh at her expression. “Octavia has nothing to worry about,” he says. The laugh in his voice disappears as he looks at her, the smile unwavering but sincere in the way he thinks it brightens his expression. “I promise.”

Octavia stares at him. Looking at his cards, she narrows her eyes as though she can see through them. For a long time she stares at the back of them, giving him enough time to glance around the bar. No one’s looking at them, and he finds that to be pitiful no one else has the joy in finding the suspicious expression of Octavia Blake to be as humorous as he does. Reaching forward, her hand hovers over the tops of his cards. She lets her fingertips brush over the edges of them. Gina’s long since discarded the rule of no touching.

Flicking the back of a card, she lifts her gaze to look at him. He makes sure to keep smiling as she narrows her eyes, tilting her head. Then she pulls it from his fingers, and he easily lets her tug it from his grasp.

Looking at it, her brows pull sharply together. “What the —”

He falls back into his chair, laughing, card pressed against his collarbone. 

Flicking the card at him, it falls on the table, Joker face up. Octavia points at him and yells, “You tricked me!”

Knowing her voice has turned a few heads, he refuses to give them much thought. Keeping himself locked in the bubble of Octavia, Gina, and himself, he feels safer, as though he’s found in his cave with its drawings and security in being difficult to find. Settling back into his chair, posture slightly slouched, he laughs, “You tricked yourself, Octavia.”

Leaning forward, elbows on the small round table, she narrows her eyes and accuses, “You said you didn’t have her.”

He shakes his head. “I never said that.”

She moves forward to shove him, and he shifts closer toward her and the table so she doesn’t have to lean so far to push him. Once she shoves him harder than Gina’s previous nudge, he only laughs louder. 

Gina leans back into her chair, placing her cards face down on the table. With a quirk to her lip, she looks between the two of them and states amusedly, “Guess we now know who has the extra piece on the side.”

Octavia throws her cards face down onto the table. Crossing her arms against her chest, she falls back hard against her chair and pouts. The petulant and cute look remains when she says, “I suck at this game.”

Lincoln shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You just need to learn how to be subtle, Octavia.”

She rolls her eyes.

Gina pokes him with a long and thin finger. When he looks at her, he notices her thin brow is arched, almost as pointedly as Octavia’s had been a round ago. Instead of being suspicious, he knows it to be amused. Gina’s much softer than Octavia could ever hope to be, and it’s that difference he appreciates most. Octavia’s unique in her roughness, something he knows another would find too sharp while he finds it to be soothing. 

Leaning toward him, Gina asks, “Are you sure you’ve never played this?”

“Never,” he smiles, shaking his head. Copying the two of them, he places his cards in a neat pile, face down, on top of the table. “We never had games like this. The games we played … They weren’t games.”

Gina’s smile is small and kind, and she relaxes back into her chair. He finds himself watching her for her reaction, knowing she’s smart enough to easily detect what he isn’t saying. Octavia remains slouched and pouting in her chair as she glares at her cards and the Joker sitting face up and almost laughing at her. 

She behaves as though she isn’t paying much attention, but he suspects she is, observing Gina’s mannerisms and tone of voice before she thinks to rescue him from the tower so many princesses in the stories he’s heard recited to him from an older woman from the Ark. Dragons and monsters and princes seem to dominate those tales, ones he thinks to be rare and unlike the ones he heard growing up as a child.

“Good thing you have Octavia here to teach how to play Old Maid.” Gina nods toward Octavia. “How many times have _you_ played it?”

Octavia rolls her eyes. Moving abruptly, she reaches for her glass of alcohol and throws it down her throat. Shaking her head, she coughs. 

Almost tutting, Gina crosses her arms against her chest and shakes her head. “Never rush perfection.”

Poking her tongue out, Octavia slams the glass back onto the table. Clearing her throat, her voice sounds smoky when she declares, “Tastes like acid.”

“It’s not so bad,” Lincoln shrugs, reaching forward to take his own glass. He doesn’t down it as Octavia had, instead bringing it close to him to watch the liquid move when he swirls the glass. Looking up at Octavia, he smiles. “You just have to know how to drink it.”

“Like you suspiciously know how to play?” she arches her brow.

Gina laughs loudly. “You’re a sore loser,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not surprised.”

Lincoln smiles, looking at her with interest. “Why not?”

Shrugging a shoulder, Gina leans forward and traces the rim of her glass with her finger. Sparing a glance toward Octavia who watches her with slightly narrowed eyes, he finds he can’t quite lean on her for an answer. She seems as curious as him, but he supposes for an entirely different reason. “I knew Bellamy on the Ark,” she says, easily. Lincoln suspects there’s more with the way she avoids looking at either of them, preferring to peer into the liquid of her glass instead. 

Octavia watches her unblinkingly, almost like one of the children in the clans. Hooked onto her words, Lincoln finds himself observing Octavia more than Gina’s body language. Eventually, though, she turns to smile at the two of them, lips curved upward in what he thinks Raven calls her trademark smirk. “He was _very_ bad at losing.”

“He always lost to me,” Octavia says. Lincoln finds her tone to be interesting, innocent in a way that no longer seems to belong to her. It’s as though she’s trying to piece the Bellamy Gina knows with the one she grew up with. “He was fine about it. He … I think he even enjoyed it.”

Gina presses her lips together and shrugs. “Maybe I was just special. He always accused me of cheating.”

Octavia’s brows furrow in confusion.

Lincoln leans toward Octavia, pulling her from getting too trapped inside of her own head. Placing the pieces of the Bellamy puzzle together must be difficult. It’s the same process he suspects he’s going through now, attempting to see where he can fit inside of the Ark. 

She looks up at him as though he’s startled her. It’s then he thinks to ask quietly, “Have you heard from him?”

Glancing down at her lap where her portable radio sits, she shakes her head. “No. He was meant to check in an hour ago.”

“He’s fine, Octavia,” he says, nodding his head. Holding her gaze, he waits for her to copy the gesture and breathe, her entire body losing its stiffness.

“I thought you asked me specifically to distract you from worrying about him,” Gina says, looking at the two of them pointedly. “It’s why we’re onto our third round of Lincoln kicking our asses at this game.” Leaning forward, she flicks the Joker card toward Octavia.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not taking that.”

Gina pushes it along the table toward Octavia, her smile wide and warm. “You won it fair and square, Little Blake.”

Her eyes roll again and she refuses to acknowledge the card being slid toward her. “I’m not that little.”

“You are compared to Big Blake.”

Octavia smiles, appearing a little younger in the way it curves immaturely on her face. He can’t help but chuckle at the sight of it. “Call him that to his face. I _dare_ you.”

Gina only smiles, tapping her fingers against the Joker.

“Am I interrupting?”

Looking up, Lincoln finds Abby standing by his shoulder. She glances between all three of them with a warm smile, her hands free of any crutches Jackson’s tried to make her take to for good measure. He’s found since being in the medical bay that he’s learned a lot of the habits of the staff there. Jackson tends to worry too much — about Abby, most of all. 

Shaking his head, Lincoln says, “Not at all. We were just playing —”

“Old Maid,” she smiles. “I used to play this with Jake.” The way her mouth droops slightly on the edges makes Lincoln’s heart sink.

“You’re welcome to play,” he says.

Shaking her head, she leans against the back of his and Octavia’s chairs, fingers curling around the very top of the backs. “No, no. Thank you, Lincoln, but I’m only here on a social visit.”

Octavia tilts her head up toward her, brow arched. “Social visit?”

 “A check up of sorts.”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t missed any —”

Abby’s eyes flicker toward Gina before she looks down at him. “You’re fine, Lincoln. I needed to ask you a few questions.” And her gaze lifts back up toward Gina.

Pressing her hands against the table, she nods. “I know when to take a hint,” Gina smiles, standing up. The chair scrapes along the ground loudly in his ears. “I’ll get us another round.”

“Thank you, Miss Martin,” Abby smiles as she walks away. Lincoln watches Gina carry herself with her head high toward the bar. When he looks around at the patrons, he finds a few of them, familiar faces he can’t quite place any names to, peering at their table. Nodding toward a man with thick brown hair, he finds the gesture isn’t reciprocated.

Moving around to take her seat, Abby settles in easily, blocking him of his view of the man. Back against the rest, she places her hands on the table and sits with a posture Lincoln’s unfamiliar with. It’s authoritative, yet relaxed.

“How are you feeling today, Lincoln?”

It’s loaded, but he supposes he should answer as truthfully as he can. Though he’s been as open as he can be with Octavia, there’s a few secrets he’s been keen to keep to himself. Holding those cards close to his chest, he wants to protect her from seeing the detailed faces and facts on their other side.

“I’m okay,” he says. Looking toward Octavia, he smiles. “I’m having a lot of fun.”

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Winning.”

When he looks at Abby, he sees her glance between the two of them, a small and soft smile on her face. “As long as you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I am.”

Crossing her legs and hitting her knee against the table, she leans toward him, and lowers her voice when she says, “I needed your opinion on the Reaper trigger, Lincoln. I’m having Sinclair take a look at it now while Marcus is gone.”

Octavia narrows her eyes. “Why can’t Kane be here?”

“It’s fine, Octavia,” he says. Kane isn’t much of an obstacle when it comes to trying to ween himself off of the Red Drug, but he’s often a shadow that likes to loom around Abby. Though he’s certain Claire had been right in believing his concern for her well-being is merely a guise to check up on their activities, he’s seen the way the man looks at Abby. It’s with a warmth he thinks is reflected in his own gaze when he looks to Octavia, and a worry that’s palpable when he catches his reflection in the mirror.

He’s still a danger. Lincoln knows it’s the truth, one that stings just a little too sharply than he’d like to admit. 

“If you can give me anything _now_ —” Abby presses her hands flat against the table, as if to calm or stop herself from reaching out to try and grasp him by the collar. It’s what he thinks she wants to do, so desperate for a way to fix him. “Any thoughts on what we spoke about, I can get Sinclair to modify the sound again. Marcus is a little intent about keeping him busy.”

Licking his bottom lip, Lincoln looks to the table. With his eyes on the Joker, he tries to travel back to the Room 302, to the high pitched sound he thinks only he could hear. Closing his eyes for a moment, he tries to recall it. All of his reactions have been to the drug, to what he thinks remains in his system. Once he gathers his thoughts, he looks to her, and says, easily, “You need to make it pitch higher, the tone lower. It doesn’t trigger anything.”

Abby’s quiet for a long moment, her gaze almost off in the distance. Knowing she’s heard him, he wonders if it’s enough. Telling her to make the sound higher and lower, to try and split it into threes and then fours has lead them in circles. His descriptions are ones he can barely understand himself, but he tries to think of the sound in terms of something he can hold, often referring to it as though it’s a twig he can easily split into its layers of bark. 

He thinks to try and give her more to go off before she lifts her gaze to his. With the smallest of nods, she says, “I’ll see what Sinclair can do.”

Octavia leans forward, arms weighing heavily on the table. Lowering her voice, she looks to him and asks, “Why do you need to remake the sound that turns you into a Reaper?”

Lincoln shifts his shoulder, looking at the table’s surface before he answers her. “It’s the only way to break it.”

Her eyes narrow in confusion. “There’s no Mountain Men.”

“There’s Emerson,” Abby says. The way she sits in her chair openly displays her discomfort. The name sounds acidic on her tongue, despite how quiet it may be, and he finds his chest begins to weigh itself down with stones before she even thinks to follow that name up with the one he absolutely loathes the syllables of. “We don’t know where Cage Wallace has gone.”

He shifts in his seat, hoping the sound isn’t as loud as a scrape of the chair’s leg against the hard floor.

“But —”

Abby shifts and turns to face Octavia. He watches Abby, observing her entire posture shifting into one that’s familiar to him. She doesn’t come to him as the Chancellor, but sits before him as a friend. “There are Reapers still out there, Octavia. It’s best we have the upper hand and know how to incapacitate them.”

Octavia arches her brow. Her voice is incredulous when she states, “By testing it on Lincoln.”

Reaching forward, he places his hand over hers. Feeling her fingers ball into tight fists beneath his own, he squeezes her hand. “It’ll help me fight it, Octavia.”

Looking down at their hands for a long moment that feels like it spans several lifetimes, Octavia gives him the smallest of nods.

Abby remains quiet for a minute before she turns to him, chair making a noise against the hard floor. “Do you trust what the Ice Nation says? About seeing Clarke.” 

Unsurprised her thoughts have taken her to where none of them know how to begin following a shadow of a friend, Lincoln looks up at her and nods. “Yes.”

“Are you _sure_?”

Without hesitation, he nods again. “Yes.”

“He trusts the Ice Nation,” Octavia says, voice slightly stressed with annoyance. Her hands hit the table as she looks at Abby, eyebrow arching in annoyance. “If you want a specific answer, why don’t you just tell him what you want to hear?”

Abby sits upright, no longer leaning toward him. “It’s not that, Octavia —”

His hand squeezes hers. “It’s okay, Octavia,” he says, looking at her. She peers at him, licking her lips as she nods again, glancing down at the table as she tries to calm herself. “ _Abi_ , the Ice Nation is trustworthy. Despite the ill blood between _Trikru_ and _Azgeda_ , there’s very little between them and you.”

“She’s my daughter —” 

“As Chancellor, forget about using your resources to chase after one girl,” he says, voice gentle. He keeps his tone low and light, as calm and reassuring as though it’s made of the warmest of fires. “The Azgeda will ally with you.”

“Why?” She shakes her head, confused. It’s the first time he thinks he’s ever heard Abby second-guess the alliance Clarke had fought so hard for. Quickly looking at Octavia from the corner of his eye, he notices how she glances toward Abby, then him, expecting an answer. “Lexa has them under the coalition. They are loyal to one another, not us.”

His hand squeezes Octavia’s before he answers. “Because Bellamy went inside the mountain and got them out.” He can feel Octavia’s gaze settle hard on the side of his face. Lincoln does his best not to give in and look at her, keeping his eyes locked on Abby’s. “Lexa waited. By waiting, she let unrest grow, and by not acting quicker than a Sky Person, he …”

She squeezes his hand back. “Knocked the legs right out from under her,” Octavia supplies.

Nodding, Lincoln looks between the two women, gaze eventually settling on Abby. She appears to be hooked onto his every word, understanding rather than confusion shifting her expression. “You should go after Luna. Focus your resources on her. Reunite the Grounders with the Skaikru to show your power. Or else Trikru will trample you for your insolence.” He clears his throat. “You killed Anya. You killed countless more lives significant to each individual. The unrest between you both will soon come to a head.”

Octavia’s hand shifts beneath his, and he finds himself squeezing hers to keep her grounded. She hisses, “They abandoned us to the Mountain Men.”

Looking toward her, he answers calmly, “Just as Lexa abandoned the Ice Nation.”

Abby arches her brow. “Lexa will help Clarke?”

Nodding his head, he answers, “If she finds her. Let Clarke go to Lexa. She won’t harm her.”

Expression breaking, he feels sympathy crack inside of him when he sees Abby’s solid grasp on her composure crumble. “How do you know?”

“I know Lexa.” He thinks to reach out and hold Abby’s hand, but refrains from doing so. Her arms wrap around herself, fingers gripping at her biceps. He can’t remember her moving at all. Releasing herself, she curls her hands around the ends of the chair’s armrests. “And I know Luna. Show her you want peace. Show her it’s your wish to stop the fighting. She’ll listen.”

Abby looks uncertain. Shaking her head, she licks her lips before she says, “We’re placing so much trust in the Grounders again. I don’t know if I can do this to us.”

“Then place your faith in me,” he says. Looking up at him, she seems surprised. “I’m …” He thinks to tell her he’s _Bleikru_ , but he suspects she’ll only furrow her brow in confusion. His place has always been by Octavia’s side. He knows Abby understands that better than anyone. 

Instead, he opts for, “I’m Trikru, too.”

Abby nods, looking down at the ground. He spares a glance toward Octavia who’s looking at him with an expression he finds he can’t quite read. He follows her gaze when she looks back toward Abby. With a small smile, she says, voice low, “I can’t do this on my own.”

Lincoln reaches out to brush his fingers against the top of her hand. “I’ll help you. _Oso throu daun ogeda._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATION
> 
> _Oso throu daun ogeda_ : We fight together.



	14. Monty III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _only 59% of mount weather is visible to their eyes, but where it’d lead him to imagine and dream and create intricate and incredible stories that weren’t exactly earthbound with the moon, he becomes afraid of what the other 41% looks like._ or the one where our heroes find perhaps that 41% hits a little too close to home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long time, no see! considering we're getting to the bits where i feel like the story definitely shifts and begins to move, i've been spending more time trying to get these turns right. i've since learned, and am still in the process of learning, that nothing is ever perfect. from offline things to that slight insecurity rearing their heads, it's why this instalment took its time in being written and then being published. i believe we'll be out of the mountain soon ...
> 
> thanks for all your kind comments on here and on tumblr! it's incredibly touching to find others are enjoying this story i really just wanted to write for myself. thank you for reading and commenting, and i hope you still enjoy it!
> 
> unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. ♥

Only 59% of the moon’s surface is visible from Earth.

That’s the thing Monty thinks about. He recites it over and over in his head — and aloud, until Raven nudges him gently with her elbow, brows pulled together quizzically, and he apologises profusely for disturbing the unsettling silence that’s gripped the ground — and continues to clutch onto it with both hands.

Raven still holds the gun.

Bellamy’s a step ahead of him. She’d withdrawn from holding onto his elbow to walk alongside him — or hobble, as she’d say, but he doesn’t really think that when he goes to describe Raven. She sours. Even with a slightly bent out of shape wing, she stretches it out as wide as she can, fearless and unflinching, and lets the wind pick her up when the bones and muscles of her wings fail her.

Sometimes he thinks Bellamy’s that wind. There’d been a song Maya had played them that makes him think of that very image, but he can’t think of the words. He can only hear the voice, high pitched, rich, and beautiful. Haunting.

The corridors of the mountain are still as cold and haunted as ever. After having searched the dining room, turning it upside down and inside out — and literally, too, Monty never wants to see the inside of this place again — they’ve discovered nothing.

No bodies. (Thankfully.) No answers. (Regrettably.)

They’d gathered outside of the dining hall. There’d been something about standing inside of it and discussing the eradication of a human race that had been so hauntingly revile even Kane had lead them to take a step outside of a place he had fond memories of.

He can hear them. Kane’s trying to be quiet, but there’s no point — they’re a small cluster of people, trees of various sizes, and though they all have different sorts of leaves; Bellamy’s are thick and his trunk hard and protective, while Kane’s like a wispy little thing that seems to be bullied by the wind at times — because they can all see the moon from where they’re standing.

Or at least he thinks so.

And the moon reveals to them a room that’s empty. It’s not clean. The table cloth along one of the long tables is stained with red wine and food sweat. The chairs have blood stains, and he thinks there’s shadows marked forever on the floor from where people had fallen.

Sometimes he sees them. He tries not to peer over his shoulder and into the dining room to see the ghost of Jasper cradling Maya for dear life.

“Did the Ice Nation say anything to you about Mount Weather?” Kane asks for the fifth time.

Bellamy sighs, exasperated. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you —”

“He’s sure!” Raven barks. She rolls her eyes before shaking her head. “How many times do we have to go through this? The Grounders told him shit. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t — who _cares_.”

Miller paces. He points his rifle toward the door. “I can’t be the only one freaked out there’s no dead bodies in there.”

Bellamy turns around, palm raised, and gestures for him to lower it. As if realising he’s holding a weapon, Miller does as Bellamy silently suggests, looking slightly startled as he does so. 

“You’re not,” Kane says. “But freaking out won’t do us any good. We need to focus. Think this through.”

“There’s no way the Ice Nation would’ve removed the bodies,” Bellamy says. “They don’t care about the Mountain Men.”

“Not enough to give them a disgraceful death?” Monroe asks. When Kane — and everyone else — looks at her, she shrugs. “They’re kind of into that stuff, right? The whole … believing in your soul moving on. Maybe they wanted to make sure they never found peace.”

Bellamy shakes his head. He doesn’t turn to Kane when he repeats to Monroe, “It’s not Ice Nation.”

“What makes you think that?” Cynthia asks, crossing her arms against her chest. It doesn’t make her look angry. Monty suspects she’s just as afraid as them, only trained to hide it better with a neutral expression.

“I just know.”

“First rule to dealing with Grounders,” she continues, “is not to trust them.”

Raven balls her fingers into the fabric of his elbow. “If Repetitive Blake thinks they’ve had nothing to do with it, then they had nothing to do with it.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything.

“I think we’ve wasted enough time going back and forth on this matter,” Kane says, a little more levelheaded than he’d been before. He seems more put together. Like he’s had time to reconnect with who he is — a leader who doesn’t let himself become frazzled. Monty tries to leech off of that right now.

“Lets split up,” he projects loudly, Leader Voice switched on. He looks over Bellamy’s shoulder, who turns on his foot and seems ready to argue. Kane’s eyes settle on him, and Monty watches the way Bellamy’s shoulders seem to draw down. “Two groups. One take the south, the other the north. We can’t leave without thoroughly searching the Mountain for at least one body.”

“Or clue,” Miller says, pacing again. He’s shaking his head, jumping randomly, shaking and shivering like a chill has crawled up his spine. “We don’t have to find _bodies_ , right?”

Kane shakes his head, looking at him sympathetically. “No. I’d very much rather you don’t stumble upon one, Cadet Miller.”

Miller takes in a deep breath, letting it explode inside of his chest. Raven reaches out to run her hand down his arm when he passes her, and Monroe literally elbows him in the chest to make him stop moving. Any other time, Monty knows it would’ve annoyed Miller, but he nods toward Monroe, lifts his free hand and touches Raven’s fingers where they spread and root themselves on his elbow.

“Lets go,” Bellamy barks. Voice deep, authoritative, and almost tangible like a wisp of smoke, Monty finds he can cling onto it like a vine. He’s looking at them, his people, and they all seem to stand to attention. That nervous energy within Miller dissipates, and he nods.

Monty threads his arm through Raven’s, despite her looking at Bellamy. Miller cocks his head. “Lets go, troops.”

He thinks Bellamy rolls his eyes again, but he doesn’t see it. He’s taken a few steps to look inside that dining room hall, and Monty knows what he sees.

All those dead bodies. Friends. Allies. Comrades. Enemies. Lost people. They’re in there, lying boneless on the floor. Monty has to close his eyes when Raven guides him past that room Bellamy remains standing on the threshold of. He doesn’t want to feel the regret and the grief that had drilled itself inside of his chest when he’d seen Jasper cradling Maya in his arms.

Raven tugs hard on the back of Bellamy’s jacket, and Monty feels a shadow enclose around him. A solid pull of Raven’s arm in his brings Bellamy to his back. She lets go of him, letting Bellamy bring up the rear, overshadowing both herself and Monty, who she doesn’t let go of. Miller and Monroe are leading their small and comfortable team to the north while Kane and the Guard take the south.

He thinks of a fact, one for his very own book, but doesn’t recall it aloud. Only 59% of Mount Weather is visible to their eyes, but where it’d lead him to imagine and dream and create intricate and incredible stories that weren’t exactly earthbound with the moon, he becomes afraid of what the other 41% looks like.  
 

*

Each corridor is just as lifeless as the last. Hollowed out and left to rot, the metallic walls of the mountain are more of a cage than they’ve ever been. With the people of Mount Weather bustling inside of it, Monty had been able to distract himself. Their voices had provided a warmth the inside now lacks.

He wonders if this is what the moon feels like, being so far away from the sun.

Bringing up the rear of their small group, he walks beside Monroe. She remains quiet, eyes directed on Bellamy’s back. He tries to notice anything but the quietness that surrounds them inside of Mount Weather, and so focuses on her, taking in the way her feet hit the ground at the same time as Bellamy’s. 

Her gaze never leaves his shoulders. 

He may step out of her direct sight, letting Raven come between them, but Monroe never breaks from keeping in literal step with him. And Monty finds he does the same, albeit with Monroe keeping him simultaneously distracted from his surroundings and focused on someone trustingly familiar.

It’s interesting to see. Monty thinks her to almost be like Bellamy’s shadow, albeit smaller and quieter than he ever thought of the size of a shadow Bellamy Blake would cast.

Miller tries to talk, making quips about the state of the corridors, of the doors being ajar, but Monty knows there’s a slight tremor to his voice. If he speaks loudly, perhaps the ghosts that haunt them both won’t appear. Monty’s afraid of looking inside of the units in fear of what he may find.

It’s Raven’s voice that trickles around them, warm and confident. Every five minutes, she presses the radio to her lips, and speaks into it, demanding Kane respond back within a matter of seconds before she even clicks off to give him the chance. It’s amusing to hear a Councillor ordered about by the Zero G, but Monty suspects Raven’s one of the few who could get away with it. Sometimes, Kane answers with a chuckle. Oftentimes, there’s a sigh of lacking either amusement at Raven’s antics or good news of what his team have found.

A good forty-minutes pass. Bellamy may wear a watch around his wrist, but it’s Miller who keeps letting them know. Clicking his index and thumb together, it’s the system both himself and Raven have organised for check-ins. He keeps the time, she makes the other team call in. It almost works, if not for the fact Monty knows where Miller obtained that watch.

Their pace is slow and careful. Monty tries to press his feet into the invisible footprints of Bellamy Blake. It’s almost safe being in his shadow. Maybe that’s why Monroe likes it so much.

Miller clicks his fingers in a spastic rhythm. Raven lifts the radio to her mouth, pressing her fingers on the buttons effortlessly to crackle it to life. “Kane, you there?”

As she lowers it, a loud burst of static echoes through the empty corridor. His voice is muffled, like a hand of electricity has been pressed over his mouth, “Yes, Raven. We’re okay.”

“Good,” she clicks back. “Talk to you in five.” Lowering the radio, she slides the clip easily onto the hem of her jeans. Taking one long step toward Bellamy, she’s side by side with him.

Monty lingers in the back. The shadows have always been the best place for plants to sprout, from weeds to little flowers to himself. The light has never been kind to him, harsh and burning, leading him to dwindle and furl in on himself.

“What are we going to do?” Raven asks Bellamy quietly. “If we can’t find them.”

Bellamy’s shoulders move. “Don’t know,” he says low and gruff. Raven peers up at him, then lets her gaze drop to his arm. She begins to reach out, fingers ready to curl around the crook of his elbow.

The radio crackles to life.

Through the static, he hears an inaudible, broken sentence of, “I’m at the High Point Special Facility.”

It’s a woman. And it doesn’t sound like Cynthia. Too throaty and not high-pitched enough, the _s_ isn’t as sharp as hers.

Raven’s hand pauses in midair, never quite landing on the perch of Bellamy’s elbow.

Monty comes to a stop. Lifting his gaze to Bellamy, Raven, and Miller, he notices how they’ve stopped completely, too. Raven glances down at her hip, the radio sparking on and off with life. Bellamy turns completely around to look at her, brow furrowed, as Miller looks to him.

“What’s going on?” Bellamy asks.

Raven lifts her hand and shushes him, finger pressed to her lips as she lets her other hand hover over the radio. For a long minute, a faint crackle teases them in the corridor, never quite catching flame despite them all wishing for it to.

It’d been a female voice. A little smoky, though Monty supposes that’s difficult to discern due to the crackle of the static layering it.

Bursting to life again, it’s high-pitched and almost at a scream itself. “… Hospital … untouched …”

“At least the supplies are still around,” Miller quips. Bellamy shushes him loudly just as Raven barks at him to keep his mouth shut. Holding his hands up in surrender, Miller peers over their shoulders to him — but Monty finds none of it amusing. His gaze flickers up toward Miller to only frown at Raven’s hip.

“Garage … Five minutes …”

Quickly, Raven picks the radio off her jeans, and presses it close to her ear. After a moment of her fingers curling around it tightly, she jerks her arm away. “Damn it!”

The radio goes quiet. The static no longer warms the hallway.

“They have a garage here?” Monroe asks. Having fallen behind when the radio had sparked to life, she’s stepped beside him, a warm presence, even if her arm doesn’t quite touch his.

Monty shrugs his shoulders. “I never got to see it.”

Miller shakes his head. “Me neither. We had leashes. Not the longest ones, either.”

Bellamy holds up his hand, as if to settle a rowdy group of one hundred kids. He takes in a deep breath, as though he needs to ground himself. Monty watches him, wanting to read his expression, but finds Bellamy’s looking to Raven.

“You want to go down there, don’t you.”

Raven nods her head. “I do. They’re down there —”

Monroe shakes her head. “We don’t know who _they_ are! We should wait for Kane.”

“By the time Kane gets from his side to here, they might be gone.”

Monroe presses her lips together, but her response remains trapped somewhere inside of her. Monty glances toward her, finding her looking at him from the corner of her eye.

“It could be survivors,” Bellamy says. He doesn’t sound too pleased, tone a little defeated. It feels heavy to Monty, settling on his shoulders like stones. Where Bellamy often inspires, Monty finds his words don’t even prickle life into his own weariness. “We need to know what’s going on.”

“And where those damn bodies are,” Raven says, voice louder. She glances at the radio before she clicks a button and it crackles to life. “Hey! Wh —”

Bellamy’s quick to step forward and snatch it from her. “What are you doing?”

“They already know we’re here.” Raven takes a step forward, back straightening. Her brace doesn’t hold her down as it often does. If anything, it’s like a pillar holding her upward, even if Monty notices how she favours her right leg over her left as always. “They were on the same channel as us!”

Bellamy glances down at the radio in his hands. Thumb sweeping over the screen of it, he frowns, as if daring it to pipe up and deny her own claim. Looking down at Raven, who stands impossibly close to him, he holds it back out to her. She snatches it back from him.

“We need to get to an elevator,” he says.

“I think there’s one up ahead,” Miller says, voice quiet. Monty glances to him and notices how his expression has gone blank. “Come on. I’ll lead.” Cocking his head to the side, Miller begins to walk away.

Monty tries to remain in step with Miller. Taking up the lead, it’s a place he doesn’t belong. It feels weird being the one to cast the shadow on the rest of the group, particularly Bellamy, who remains tall and at Raven’s side. Monroe brings up his rear, as if untrusting of anyone else watching his back.

The elevator’s croaky but stable beneath their feet. Peering up, he can see the chute through the gaps in the roof of the box. Miller stares at the buttons, brow furrowed, as he tries to figure out which one would hold the supposed garages.

Raven brushes by them, shoving at his shoulder and Miller’s. Punching the _G_ button with her index, she pulls back and leans heavily against Bellamy. Monroe grips his arm.

“G for Garage, morons,” Raven scoffs, shaking her head. It lacks its usual bite. Monty thinks he hears a quiver in her voice. If he looks at how she grips onto Bellamy’s arm, tucking her fingers into the safety of the crook of his elbow, he’d think her to be afraid.

It’s comforting to know she is.

The elevator groans and shakes. Everyone seems to glance up at the high ceiling, finding the wiring of the roof of this metal box to be unnerving. Miller grips the side of the elevator while Monty tries to tuck his fingers hard into the sleeves of his jacket.

Holding his breath for the longest time, once the elevator settles, doors creaking open jerkily, they all seem to release a collective sigh.

No one moves.

Bellamy remains at the back, Raven and Monroe tethering him to the spot. Miller’s knuckles are white on the silver armrests inside of the elevator. Monty finds his feet have glued themselves to the floor.

The room before them is pale white, almost blinding if not for the dull flickering lights attached to the ceiling. Some of them hang low, rectangular beams that seem on the verge of dying. It’s a large square of a room, incredibly vacant space, if not for the large, bulky objects positioned in the corners of the room.

There’s several of them. Long sheets of cloth have been thrown over them, of navy greens and dull blues. Monty thinks he can spy a tire, if what he learned from the books he’d read on the Ark are anything to go by.

“Wow,” Raven lets out a breath. “I thought I was totally wrong about the _G_ being for Garage thing.”

Bellamy sighs. “Come on.”

He’s the first one to move, breaking the silence that seems so tangible it grips them and roots them in place. Elbowing his way gently through the small throng of them, he’s the first to press his foot against the moon’s surface.

Or the garage none of them had known existed.

Monty follows, eying how Raven seems to linger behind Bellamy. Her hand seems to drift near his back, as though she’s ready to pull a weapon that’s vacant from his back pocket. She’s glancing around the room, and he spies her profile, mouth agape in wonderment, eyes taking in everything.

She abandons Bellamy for the nearest giant surprise hiding beneath rough cloth. Monty follows her, fingering it, but snatches his hand away once she tugs at the fabric.

“Help me!” she calls out.

They congregate around the vehicle and pull the tarp off of it. Miller tugs on it with Monroe, drawing it back from them, dust filtering in the air as it climbs then sinks back to the ground.

Staring at the vehicle, Monty doesn’t recognise it. Large wheels almost as tall as him, a door he can’t quite reach without a step. It has the print of a cheetah, except with muted green colours. Raven steps close to it, standing on the tips of her toes the best she can manage. She almost presses her nose against the window before Bellamy tells her to step back.

Arching her brow, she rolls her eyes at him. “Tell me to step back when we’re not looking at a goddamn jeep, Blake.” Pressing her hand against the door, she wipes away a streak of dust. 

“How do you know it’s a jeep?” Miller asks uncertainly.

Raven smiles. She continues to wipe away the dust, leaving lines in her wake as she lets her fingers drape along the side of its doors. Moving toward the back, she beckons them with a wave of her hand. 

Dusting off a silver logo, she taps it with her finger. “I can read. Besides, didn’t you ever crack open a book on cars?”

Miller rolls his eyes.

“Okay,” Bellamy says, voice loud. It seems to echo within the room, even though he’s not projecting it. “Split up. Lets see what we can find here. Stay alert. I think whoever we heard on the radio would be gone by now.”

Bellamy remains with Raven, watching her with disinterest as she surveys the jeep.

Monty follows Miller and Monroe, keeping close to them. 

“This is creepy as shit,” Miller mumbles. He glances over his shoulder, eyeing Raven studying the car. There’s a sound of a door opening and Bellamy’s own grumbling.

“Do you really think someone else is here?” Monroe asks. She keeps her hands on her rifle, looking straight ahead instead of at the cars still draped in thick tarp.

“I don’t know,” Monty says, glancing around. “We should be careful.”

Walking through the empty, large space is daunting. It’s like a long runway, one where the ground is covered in dust that seems to crinkle beneath his feet. When he looks down, he spots his boots are muddied, his shoelace almost untying themselves.

Inevitably, there’s an end to the warehouse. Instead of being met with another elevator, there’s a cage of a room with an observatory window. The stained glass is murky at best, reminding Monty of looking into an unclear cup of water. It looks large inside and abandoned, the door leading to the room thick and partly open.

Moving closer, Monty reaches out to tug on both Miller and Monroe’s sleeves, bringing them to a stop.

Looking at him, Miller asks, “What?”

Instead of answering, Monty cocks his head toward the window. 

There’s dark movement inside. The dull lights of the garage highlight a moving silhouette, long and lean.

“It’s just our shadow,” Monroe says.

Monty shakes his head. “Get Bellamy,” he says quietly.

Remaining where he stands, Monty hears Monroe’s quiet footsteps move hurriedly back to Bellamy. Staying still, Monty observes the movement beyond the murky glass. It doesn’t once fade. With Monroe retreating, the shape doesn’t stop moving. Back and forth, up and down, scooping and reaching and even gliding. Monty squints his eyes to try and see features, something more specific, but without the moonlight, he can’t see anything.

He hears Bellamy and Raven’s quiet approach with Monroe before he sees them reflected lamely in the glass. Tilting his head slightly toward them standing behind him, he quietly says, “You see that?”

Raven moves forward, shoulder brushing against his. “Yeah. What the —”

“Shhh,” Miller says too loudly.

Monty takes a step forward.

Miller whispers harshly, “What are you doing?”

Monty only waves his hand as response.

He hears them slowly follow him, albeit many steps behind. Approaching the glass, he’s almost pressing his nose against it.

And that’s when he sees her.

The air within the room seems to be sucked away.

A woman with dark, straight hair, long enough to almost touch her waist, stands with her back toward them. She’s collecting odd knickknacks from a table near the corner. It looks like a workbench, smaller in size to Raven’s back at camp, but one all the same.

She doesn’t seem to notice them. Her posture remains safe, if calm. Her fingers continue to work at stealing tools and other things Monty doesn’t recognise and sweeping them into a satchel slung over her shoulder.

She’s dressed in black pants and a black long-sleeved top, boots on her feet that remain glued to the floor. Appearing cleaner than the group combined, she seems out of place.

Miller’s foot skids against the floor. The sound seems to echo in the vast warehouse.

She looks up and over her shoulder.

Slender features, dark eyes, high forehead. She’s taller now that he can see her face. Nose slim, fingers long; a necklace hangs off her collarbone, but Monty can’t see what the pendant’s shape truly is.

Her eyes don’t widen. He remembers that later.

Looking at them, she surveys them, as if she’s counting how many stand before her, dumbstruck and holding weapons.

Then she turns on her heel and runs.

Miller takes a loud step forward, but Bellamy throws his arm out. He’s the only one who’s moved, gun raised toward the slightly ajar door.

But it never opens.

Monty can see it in his peripheral, but won’t recall it until much later. When he tells this story to Luna, asking her what she would make out of it, he’ll find himself recalling details.

Like Raven holding Monroe’s hand. Bellamy refusing to let Miller chase after the strange woman as he kicked the door open and discovered a door in the back of the room, out of sight from the observation window, that she’d escaped through. 

And his own voice echoing in disbelief within the garage.

There’s a 1% chance of this occurring. One _impossible_ chance.

“Mom?”


	15. Octavia IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _stop pacing._ or the one where octavia realises, much like her, war doesn't stand still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, it's been a while! i can only explain my absence from this fic as burn-out — creative, personal, and for this story as i placed a little too much pressure on myself for it to be likeable and well-written. (my bad.) my life has undergone some big changes that means my time and energy is used up at my new job, but that also means i'm desperate for an outlet as well. i do intend to continue this to completion, as i have my own outline; my desire to still write it is still there. 
> 
> this chapter is heavily lincoln/octavia, and i have a feeling the events in season three hold some accountability for how long it's taken for me to finish this part of the story.
> 
> thank you to everyone who has read this fic, subscribed, commented on it here, and for your support on tumblr, whether it's reblogging it or sending me a message. i much appreciate it, and i hope that you continue to enjoy this! 
> 
> as always, this is unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. ♥

“You’re going to pace a hole into the floor.”

Octavia ignores him. Lincoln’s been sitting on her bed for almost thirty minutes, simply watching her like she's the stars in the night sky. 

Usually she’d enjoy how he looks at her. Eyes soft, expression relaxed; she likes how he smiles without realising it, and looks younger than he actually is. There’s something about it that smooths his puckered skin out, like he’s suddenly embodying the moon.

She knows the surface of it is pocketed from the impacts of craters slamming into it, trying to knock it out of place. He’s told her numerous stories about how it’s a great warrior, much like her; soft and kind, always rising in the dark to shed light for those who peer up at her for guidance. She enjoys the stories, finding they’re unlike the ones Bellamy used to recite to her as a child. It always makes the moon feel closer to her. 

She likes how it looks from afar. Glowing, smooth, something radiant in an otherwise vacuum of darkness.

Continuing to pace with her gaze focused down on the floor that refuses to give her any answers to her questions, she hears him sigh and shift on the bed. Catching a glimpse of him sitting on the edge, hands clasped and pressed against his knees, he tries not to show he’s leeched some of her worry into his tense muscles. 

When she feels his eyes on him, she stops and looks at him. He’s looking at her more patiently than she feels.

She begins pacing again. “They’ll radio in when they need to, Octavia,” he says gently.

She turns quickly toward him. “They need to do it _now_. It’s already been over three hours.”

He counters easily, “Maybe the signal’s jammed.”

She stops pacing to look at him like he’s grown several moons around his head. “Raven’s there!”

He lifts his shoulder. Octavia continues to pace back and forth, not thinking of what his own response would be if he let himself say it.

Lincoln remains quiet for a few moments, possibly counting the steps she’s taking before he even speaks again. And when he does, his voice is soft, placating, like she’s a wild animal he needs to tame. “If they weren’t alright, we’d know.”

Octavia swallows thickly.

“Most of them have radios.”

“ _Most_ ,” she says. She turns her head to glare at him, feet continuing to try and burn a crater-sized hole in the cold linoleum floor. “Not all of them.”

“Bellamy has a radio.”

Her hands bunch up, and she doesn’t look at him when she almost growls low in her throat in frustration. “Bellamy doesn’t know how to use a radio.”

When she glances at Lincoln, there’s an amused curve to his lips.

She stops dead and demands, “What?”

He shakes his head, still amused. “Bellamy knows how to use a radio when you’re involved, Octavia. I’m sure he’d know how to fly to the moon if you were there.”

She grits her teeth, balls her hands into fists, then forces herself to relax all over. Her shoulders feel tense. Unsurprising to her, she’s not good at this. She never learned how to relax, despite Bellamy’s best efforts. “Sometimes Bellamy’s dumb. I’d know. You don’t.”

“I know Bellamy,” he says.

She turns on him and declares loudly, “Not as well as I do!”

He chuckles lowly at her.

“Stop finding this amusing.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and there’s still a warm laugh to his voice. “He’s fine, Octavia. You have to learn to believe in the good.”

“Why?” She stops pacing again. “Doing that’s never done any good for me.”

Lincoln pushes himself to stand. She can hear him, and purposefully refuses to look at him as she walks back and forth again.

He comes to stand in her way. She almost thinks to move around him, twisting her body to stubbornly refuse to let him stop her, but his arms open wide and he captures her easily. Pulling her to his chest, she lets herself fold there immediately.

“You’re allowed to worry,” he tells her softly. She feels his chin against the top of her head, breath ruffling her already tangled hair. “But working yourself up over the _possibility_ he isn’t okay isn’t doing anyone any favours.” She lets out a sigh, the tension shifting from setting hard somewhere in her back and hands. Fingers curled around the fabric of his shirt, she releases it and presses her cheek firmly against his warm chest. The shirt’s fabric is softer than what he usually wears. “Bellamy would radio if there was a problem. He’d move a mountain for you, regardless of who’s stopping him.”

She remains quiet for a long moment. “Raven hasn’t called in, either.”

“You know she would if there was a problem,” he says. “If Bellamy can’t get to a radio, Raven would make one out of thin air. You have nothing to worry about.”

Wrapping her arms tightly around him, she squeezes him to her. He’s all hard muscle, much like the moon. She can feel his heart beat against her cheek; she takes some time to listen to the steadiness of it as she often does when she can’t settle enough to sleep. Lincoln’s hands are flat against her back, but she feels his fingers move into her hair. “I don’t like them being there,” she mumbles against his shirt. “I should’ve went with them.”

His hand rubs down her back. “I know,” he says, voice sounding a little distant. 

She peers up at him, resting her chin lightly on his chest. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

His lips curve up. “I know,” he repeats. “I didn’t think you did.”

Octavia presses her cheek hard against his chest, hugging him more tightly than she can even comprehend of her own minute strength. Holding Lincoln together makes her feel as though pieces of her aren’t beginning to crumble with each passing hour her brother’s not back home.

She feels him chuckle, it reverberating in his chest. 

“What?”

“Stop pacing.”

Her brows furrow together. His hands in her hair tug gently at the ends. It’s then Octavia realises she’d been trying to pace with him in her arms.

*

When the radio finally crackles with Monty’s voice on the other end, Octavia begins to breathe again.

Lincoln isn’t with her when she’s walking outside the perimetre of the camp’s fence. Having easily snuck through it when the Guard had their backs turned, she’s been wandering aimlessly near the fence for the past hour. With the Grounders no longer a threat, the electricity has been switched off.

She doesn’t wait a second to let the information sink in.

Octavia bolts from where she walks through a tiny cluster of skinny trees and slips through the gap in the fence again, uncaring if anyone happens to witness her sneak through. With her boots heavy and pounding against the ground, she runs through the yard of the camp, searching for Lincoln’s familiar face.

Finding him in the dining hall, she comes to an abrupt stop when she sees him standing, three people sitting at the table he shadows over. Octavia’s footsteps are uncharacteristically quiet as she approaches slowly, her eyes never moving from the way Lincoln stands stiffly. His back’s straight and his arms follow suit, fingers fanned out but tempted to curl in on themselves again.

“Lincoln?” She doesn’t mean to break worsen the tension, but it grows thicker as its fingers begin to crawl all over her.

He turns to look at her over his shoulder, the tension in his expression unattractive. Letting her gaze linger on him for a long moment, she focuses on the people in front of him — Jeremy, a man with a bulky build and nine fingers, sits in a chair with an arrogance Octavia wishes to slice with her knife, and Lilah, a woman of small stature but a horrible sharp glare. Gina stands to the side, her hand wrapped around an empty chair, and a look of exasperation on her face.

In the far background, she notices Jasper standing to attention, his eyes wide and his brows slightly furrowed, but the usual look of confusion and anger isn’t there.

Lincoln doesn’t speak, but turns to her.

“You should stay, Lincoln,” Gina says. The chair scrapes against the floor of the dining hall underneath her strength.

Jeremy stares Lincoln down with a look Octavia thinks she knows well. It’s one Bellamy used to wear whenever he gazed upon Lincoln. Sharp, hard, ugly, a look so filled with loathing she used to flinch every time her brother touched her.

Lincoln looks over his shoulder at her and shakes his head. “It’s okay. I want some fresh air.”

Octavia doesn’t watch him or Gina as she stares at Jeremy. His sharp blue gaze makes her hate the shade of the sky they remind her of.

She feels Lincoln’s fingers curl around her bicep, pulling her back into the present. She’d been staring so intently at Jeremy in the hope of carving a crater in his head she hadn’t noticed him advance towards her. Leaning into her, he murmurs, “Come on, Octavia.”

She barely moves. Jaw clenched, she’s surprised when she feels his warm fingers on the back of her hand. Looking down, she notices then she’s clutching at the handle of her knife.

When she looks up again, she notices Jasper move jerkily. In his hand is a knife, useless in his weak grip but menacing all the same.

“Come on,” Lincoln repeats, and she lets him turn her around and lead them out of the dining hall.

She doesn’t speak until they’re almost at the mouth of the Ark, the sunlight streaming in against the silver of its interior. Wrapping her hand around his arm, she pulls him to a stop. “What was that about?” Her voice is a harsh demand.

He doesn’t look at her. She stands on the tips of her toes to try and get him to so much as give her a glance, but he doesn’t. “Nothing.”

Reaching upward, her fingers brush gently against his jaw. Quietly, she begs, “Tell me.”

His eyes focus over her shoulder, against the scarred wall. Her fingers brush underneath his jawline before they begin to fall. His fingers wrap around her own and keep them against the curve of his shoulder.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Lincoln says, finally looking at her. “They just wanted my table.”

Octavia’s fingers move in his grip, and his tighten around hers to keep them shackled and still.

He stares down at her, expression open. He pleads, “Leave it at that, Octavia.”

Octavia wants to snap her jaw and release herself from his grip, but she lets him keep her at bay. Her heart thumps and the need to spin on her heels lingers, but she remains where she is, despite her instincts telling her to run the opposite way with the strides of a warrior, she knows this is where she needs to be right now. This is how a warrior wins a battle, standing by her own kin when they need her.

His fingers give hers a gentle squeeze, strength loosening into something more comfortable. “What did you come to tell me?”

In her other hand is the radio; bringing it up to show him, she brushes her thumb over where the speaker is. “They’re coming back,” she says. There’s little relief in her words. It’d all bursted the moment she almost choked on the tension in the dining hall. “Everyone.”

Lincoln wears the relief she can barely slip into. “We’re waiting for them at the gate, aren’t we?”

Octavia nods.

Bringing her hand up to his lips, he slides his fingers into the spaces of her own. Leading them through the mouth of the fallen Ark and to the front gates, their strides are slow and comfortable. Octavia can feel the tension leaving her with the way his palm kisses her own.

Squeezing his fingers, she looks up at him, and says quietly, “You’re going to tell me what that was about sooner or later, or I’m going to find out myself.”

Lincoln inhales deeply through his nose. Looking out at the trees, he nods. She almost misses it, turning her head a little too late to catch his eye. The moment doesn’t feel gone, but she knows she has to let it go for now.

Walking toward the gates, she turns her head, watching the people who are milling about outside. None of them turn to look at them, too interested in their own business and conversations to take notice of a girl who lived under the floor her entire life and a man who never once knew what the stars looked like from up in space.

Once they reach the fence, they stop. Hands wrapped in one another, she kicks at the dirt while Lincoln looks out at the trees. 

She gazes up at him, admiring his handsome face. “Do you miss it?”

He looks down at her, brows furrowing together.

“Living out there. Being Lincoln.”

He lifts their joined hands to press his lips to the back of her knuckles. “I like being this Lincoln.”

Octavia smiles. “It’s okay if you do,” she says, determined not to let his sweet words encourage her to drop this thread. “I know I’d miss it to. The freedom.”

Lowering their hands, he shakes his head. “It wasn’t freedom, Octavia.” He looks toward the fallen Ark and the people walking about, entering the metallic junk and exiting it. “I like it here. I like being with you. I like the person I am with you.” He turns back to her. “I don’t want you to doubt that for a second.”

She nods her head. “I don’t doubt it,” she says. “Because I like being here with you, too.”

He smiles. Octavia lets go of his hand, stepping into his warm body to wrap her arms around his torso. She feels his hands against the small of her back, large and warm and protective. Pressing her cheek to his chest, she listens for his heartbeat again, shifting onto the tips of her toes to locate it.

Once she’s content with her pillow, she lets her gaze focus on the trees outside of the camp. They stand tall and sturdy, thick and healthy, and she can’t help but wonder if this is what Lincoln had woken to each and every day. Though there’s shadows and darkness to be found in clusters of trees, she thinks there’s a freedom to be found in how the sun filters down through the canopy. The scenery always changes, depending on how high and bright the sun is that day. It’s an adventure she hopes to be apart of, sharing it with him.

Pressing her cheek more comfortably against his chest, she frowns when she thinks she sees someone peering out of the bushes in the distance. 

Pulling back from him, it causes Lincoln to glance down at her. “Oct —” She doesn’t look at him when she shakes her head.

He must look over to the trees outside of the gates and see them too. She can’t tell if it’s a man or woman, their face marked with dark paint. Covered from head to toe in a mossy green, she only notices them from how they seem to stick out from the brightness of the green leaves today.

Abruptly, the Grounder disappears into the cluster of trees and bush.

She looks up at him. “What do you think that means?”

Lincoln’s still looking out toward the trees, his eyes now scanning the horizon. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I hope we don’t find out.”


End file.
